Growth process in family businesses

ABSTRACT GROWTH PROCESS IN FAMILY BUSINESSES Cemil ULUKAN Business Administration Dept. Anadolu University, Institute of Social Sciences, January 1999 Advisor: Prof. Dr. Şan ÖZ-ALP The study is built on two subjects: family businesses and growth. Interception of family and business systems bring about some exclusive characteristics, advantages and drawbacks. These companies are unique in terms of their management styles, organizational relationships, and approaches toward different issues. Hence, several organizational and managerial problems occur when traditional management approaches are applied directly to them. Successful applications of policies and strategies require a good understanding of internal structures, underlining characteristics and dynamics of family businesses. Growth is a change process, and managing growth effectively has a big impact on any firm's future well being. In earlier decades, growth process was seen an issue which can be stated and taught in mostly mathematical formulas. Today, realizing its several dimensions, it is taken as an element of organizational change in terms of a firm's strategic goals. Seizing and implementing a sustainable growth process is one of executives' important responsibilities among others. Moreover, it is a challenging job for managers to cope with complex organizational structure associated with growth. Exploring and defining the conditions and needs of a healthy growth process, therefore, becomes an important research topic. After searching the literature on family businesses and growth, a questionnaire was designed, and then applied face to face to family member top managers and professional managers to explore how growth process was shaped in family businesses. Findings suggest that Turkish family businesses have unique characteristics, needs, priorities and problems, different from Western counterparts; and growth process takes shapes under their unique conditions. in A