Guest contributor: Tarek el Sehity Tarek el Sehity is a researcher and lecturer at Sigmund Freud University in Vienna. “For things to remain the same, everything must change.” Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard This enduring wisdom captures a fundamental truth for business families that have withstood the test of time: preserving the values that…

In today’s world, doing global work is getting harder. The geopolitical landscape—fractured alliances, renewed nationalism, sanctions, airspace restrictions, and unpredictable regulation—combined with macro-economic headwinds like inflation, energy costs, and supply chain stress, have made everything from travel to deployment of talent more expensive and time-consuming. For anyone working across borders, these changes are no longer…

In a previous article, we analyzed the key hurdles faced by family businesses based on their life cycle. In this post, we’ll turn our focus to the challenges they encounter in their transition from the second to the third generation and beyond. The second generation: reorganizing ownership and managing divergent interests After successfully navigating the…

A father and daughter sit in a boardroom. He believes he’s giving her sound advice; she hears only criticism. Across the table, what could be a constructive dialogue turns into stony silence and simmering resentment. Scenarios like this play out every day in family firms, where conversations carry multiple layers of meaning. Running a family…