In coordination with the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI), the Telfer Knowledge Hub has been featuring select excerpts from the book, Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions That Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask.

The result of years of international research and practical experience, Enabling Next Generation Legacies delves into the unique challenges that confront family enterprises.

Telfer professors Peter Jaskiewicz and Sabine Rau have brought together the world’s leading academics, practitioners, and enterprising families to answer the most pressing questions faced by Next Generation members in a short and concise, yet meaningful way.

The book consists of best practices, real-life examples, and additional critical questions for reflection from nearly 100 contributors from 27 different countries. Expert commentaries come from members of the world’s leading family businesses including Auchan (France), Saputo (Canada), and Sabra (Israel), as well as from various academic experts from business schools around the globe like Kellogg, IMD, and INSEAD.

Below, read an expert response to a pressing question raised by Next Generation members.

We have always had a fair deal of conflicts in the family. Now that I am an adult, should I do anything about it?

Commentary by Daniel Aponte Prypchan, Venezuela

I am a third-generation member of two families. The Aponte family, on my father’s side, is in the business of farming, banking, commercial, and residential real estate and a large network of pharmacies. The Prypchan family, on my mother’s side, is in the business of hospitals; we run Venezuela’s largest psychiatric hospital, and development and construction of real estate both in health care and residential property. I am more involved with mother’s side (Prypchan) family as I am in an inheritance lawsuit with my father’s family. I am currently the manager of our not-for-profit organization in the U.S., Psychiatry, Philosophy and the Arts, and I deal with all the accounting, payroll, and other issues of all our properties in Venezuela, acting as a de facto small family office manager.

I think the question of how to deal with conflicts, especially if they are long-standing conflicts, is an important one and should be answered before a Next Gen decides to enter the family business in a more active way. Regarding the response by Professor Kim Eddleston[1], I think it is useful in guiding a younger Next Gen through the basic precepts of conflict as something all business-owing families go through. It is a great article to start to put some order to the issues you may be experiencing in your family business. However, when the issues of the family are intense and go well into the destructiveness of “relationship conflict” over generations, the level of help of this article decreases significantly.

In my experience most of the issues afflicting families in business are deeply entrenched and sometimes difficult to even verbalize. Sometimes it’s not that the family doesn’t know what do to, but that the family is caught in a dysfunctional dynamic that does not allow them to take action, leaving them stuck for years in pathological reactions ranging from minor arguments to outright abuse and bereavement. What do you do then?

My father’s mother lied to my face about my inheritance for nine years, saying that “all will be divided fairly and by the law” whilst falsifying signatures, selling assets, and taking money to other jurisdictions. I was twenty-four when my grandfather died and I am now forty-one, and I have yet to receive my inheritance. I’m still in various lawsuits against them. My grandmother died six months ago. My father died in a plane crash when I was two and my grandmother was the person who identified his body. Most of my grandmother’s actions had nothing to do with me. She barely knew me. Her actions were more about her relationship with men, her anger at my mum not speaking to them, and many more things that I will never know about. I had a feeling that this could happen, but I thought I was doing the correct thing giving them time to sort everything out and to collaborate. Not suing them earlier is the biggest regret and mistake of my life. It is important to always understand the dynamics of your family. Lack of real insight can create naivety about the ways family relationships can go wrong. I have been in therapy, I have studied family dynamics, I have done all sorts of spiritual and psychological courses and training, all to deal with my grief and my own responsibility in not knowing my family enough to preempt this sort of destructive behaviour occurring. It was there, obvious to others, but I never fully took responsibility to know and act accordingly.

Coming from two less-than-functional families owning multiple businesses, I can recommend some basic concepts that would allow a Next Gen to navigate and understand their complex family’s dynamic better. Broadly speaking my key recommendations would be:

1. Understand the core values of the senior generation.
2. Connect with your family’s wounds and traumas.
3. Be empathic and compassionate towards all family members.
4. Be mindful of all communications.
5. Take responsibility for your part in the dynamic.
6. Own your family’s dynamics and be responsible to heal them.
7. Ethical considerations—if not you, who will do it?

This sounds simple but achieving a high level of understanding of your family dynamic is the work of a lifetime. The good news is that the more you understand the dynamic and its members, the more you will be able to stir your family into a healthier path of love and connection. Simply trying to apply any system of control over a dynamic you neither own nor fully understand will probably not work. The work of knowing one’s family is beautiful and necessary.

Questions for Further Reflection

• Does your family have family-specific types of conflict? If so, what are they?
• Are all conflicts in families considered “bad”?
• What is your own conflict management style when you disagree with your parents, siblings, and/or cousins?
• What could you do to help reduce the dangers of detrimental conflicts in your family?
• What are some ways to address debilitating and entrenched conflicts in families?

[1] Every question proposed in Enabling Next Generation Legacies includes an expert response, followed by a commentary by a next generation member. In the featured chapter, Kimberly A. Eddleston – Schulze Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and Montoni research fellow at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University – offers a response prior to Daniel Aponte Prypchan’s commentary. See the information below for how to get your own copy of Enabling Next Generation Legacies.

Enabling Next Generation Legacies: 35 Questions That Next Generation Members in Enterprising Families Ask is now available in eBook and hardcopy. All royalties from Enabling Next Generation Legacies go towards the University of Ottawa’s Telfer Fund, helping students in need. Learn more at www.35questions.com.

To read more about how Telfer is shaping the conversation about the future of family enterprise, visit the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date.

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Peyman Varshoei began the doctoral program in management at Telfer in 2017 after completing an MSc in socio-economic systems engineering. He is specializing in health systems under the supervision of professors Jonathan Patrick and Onur Ozturk. We interviewed him to learn more about his research into scheduling problems in health systems.

Why did you choose to study health systems?

I chose to do a PhD in management (health systems) because there are many research opportunities that could contribute to improving Canada’s health system. My previous degrees in industrial and systems engineering provided me with some techniques in advanced analytics that enabled me to work on complex problems in healthcare analytics, particularly patient and resource scheduling.

What is your research about and what will it contribute to academic literature?

My research concerns scheduling problems in healthcare, which includes hospital patient admission scheduling and home care nurse scheduling and routing problems. In my first study, I propose a scheduling policy that helps hospitals provide and maintain nimbleness during pandemic waves. It contributes by exploring how to strengthen pandemic wave recovery by preventing backlogs of elective surgeries that are postponed during the earlier pandemic waves. I am also introducing novel methods to solve rarely studied, complex nurse scheduling and routing problems in home care.

You recently presented your work at the Canadian Operations Research Society (CORS) conference. What are the highlights from that study?

At the CORS 2021 conference, I presented my first chapter: a “nimbleness” admission scheduling policy. I demonstrated how hospitals can schedule elective patients during pandemics in a way that maximizes elective admissions and also allows for quickly making some beds available for pandemic patients in the event of a surge.

What impact could your research have on Canadian health care?

My first thesis research shows policymakers and hospital managers ways to avoid massive cancellations of elective admissions during pandemics. The findings of my second research provide ways for policy and managerial decision-makers to increase both the efficiency of practice of home care nurses and patient satisfaction with home care services.

By Rania Nasrallah-Massaad

Mary Valdes started the Telfer PhD in Management program in 2017, after completing a research-based MBA in Chile. She is a public accountant specializing in tax law.

Mary is training under the supervision of Professor Samia Chreim. Her main research interests are management accounting, management control systems (MCS), mining clusters, and small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) participation in global production networks. We interviewed her to learn more about her research on management accounting of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Why did you choose to study accounting?

Accounting was a natural choice for my PhD. I worked for 15 years as a public accountant, auditor and executive in several public and private sector organizations. My experience has shown me the tangible benefits of management accounting for firm success and survival. It is particularly important for SMEs, which are the most vulnerable firms and key to economic development.

What is your research about and how will it contribute to academic literature?

I research management control systems (MCS). My thesis uses multiple case studies with SMEs that are suppliers of the mining industry in Chile. I aim to describe their MCS and understand the factors that lead firms to choose their control configuration.

The study is novel and will provide a comprehensive assessment of the MCS and consider analysis for both the organizations and the individuals. It is also unique in that I am applying traditional frameworks of MCS in the context of the extractive industry in Latin America.

What are some of the highlights from your work?

My preliminary findings highlight that a diversity of control strategies exists among the firms, including some that have sophisticated control systems ­— a finding that challenges the MCS literature on SMEs.

SMEs use creative ways to exert control over their employees, resources and contractual commitments, and to cope with constraints they face due to limited available resources and a power asymmetry with their customers, the large mining firms.

The participants’ narratives showcase the industry’s requirements and contractual agreements, which generate control demands over them. However, it’s also emerging from the analysis that managers’ characteristics and background influence the choices of the control practices and nuances in their use, which could explain MCS diversity.

What impact can your research have on Canadian businesses? 

Chile and Canada both have substantial mining and extractive industries where SMEs are crucial suppliers, so my work would also be informative to Canadian businesses. I hope my study brings insights into SME organization and spurs more academic attention, which is the first step to improving policy and support for SMEs. 

By Rania Nasrallah-Massaad

Mariam Magdy Hussein started a PhD in management in 2017, specializing in organizational behaviour and human resources, at the Telfer School of Management. She had earned an MSc from the German University of Cairo in 2014 and previously worked as an assistant lecturer in human resources management in management technology (2011 to 2014). Now, under the supervision of Professor Sharon L. O’Sullivan, Mariam has been looking at cultural variations in verbal and non-verbal communications, and the potential role of empathy in facilitating intercultural interactions.

Why did you choose to study organizational behaviour and human resources (OBHR)? Any personal motivation behind your interest?

I chose the OBHR stream because I enjoy listening to people’s stories about their experiences and their communicational interactions in different organizational settings. I’m particularly interested in finding ways to help underrepresented persons improve their experiences with their diverse counterparts in cases where miscommunication is routine and, in some cases, dysfunctional.

What is your research about and what will it contribute to academic literature?

My research is focused on underrepresented Middle Eastern newcomers’ groups in Canada. I’m eliciting their experiences in the health care service sector in terms of facilitators and barriers to effective communication and high-quality interaction. I’m also speaking to a sample of Canadian health care providers to understand their perspectives on interacting with newcomer clients. With my research, I will develop recommendations for training and orientation interventions for both groups to reconcile any perceptional differences and improve the quality of service provided.

Tell us about a recent highlight of your research.

I recently received the best student paper award at the 2021 Administrative Sciences Association of Canada (ASAC) conference. In my conceptual paper Behaving Culturally Empathic versus Being Culturally Empathic: Does Authenticity Matter?, I argue that perceptions of authenticity in intercultural interactions do matter for quality organizational interactions between cultural insiders and outsiders. I developed propositions that stimulate empathic and culturally intelligent interactions.

What impact could your research have on Canadian businesses?

My research underscores the challenges that many newcomers face in Canada within specific service provision organizational sectors. It will shed light on the positive and negative influencers of these interactions to develop concrete recommendations. These recommendations will support training interventions for Canadian service providers, as well as orientation services for newcomers.

By Rania Nasrallah-Massaad