Any study on the involvement and active participation of women in family businesses is, by nature, enormously perilous and misleading, as in a traditional family business most of the influence and the contribution of women is below the surface. Rather than hold official designations, roles here mean the various avatars women assume to accomplish tasks, inter alia: conflict resolution, team building, educator/mentor and mediator. Also, these women regularly are sounding boards for defining moral, ethical and CSR boundaries, long before it was fashionable -- or regulated.
In management jargon, they are "key stakeholders" who perform the roles of consultants, advisors, arbitrators, family counsel, independent/ non-executive board, public relations experts, and of course, executives. But, traditionally, they have been executives in non-operating and informal roles than operating ones.
But recently, several watershed events have compelled a re-examination of this traditional role of women members in family businesses, opening the way for them to participate in a more formal and structured manner.
First, families have been getting smaller. So families might need to choose between grooming daughters to head the business or making friends with buyout funds (for selling off the family enterprise.)
Next, the ubiquity of women in the workforce has given rise to a "demographic dividend" that is reflected at a family business level.
This perhaps is an outcome of the third factor: universal opportunity to education. This has led to an equal footing with male peers (read brothers and husbands), and consequently an acceptance in the workplace and as leaders.
Last, but certainly not least, Indian courts have recently ruled that daughters have the right to an equal share of inheritance vis-a-vis their male siblings.
Rather than the subject of idle musings, the above factors render the role of women a live issue to be addressed with a sense of urgency.
Sushma Berlia, who co-heads the Apeejay Svaran conglomerate with her husband, asserts: "Women have always played an indispensable role in the non-operating spheres of their family businesses but to not involve them in a more active, operational role, would be a travesty."
She should know. The first woman president of a 100-year-old Indian chamber of commerce, she is now grooming her MIT-educated daughter-in-law in the business.
Providing a useful jab in the ribs to drive the point home are high-profile women entrepreneurs (think Elizabeth Arden or Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon) and top executives of hard-nosed industrial conglomerates (Indira Nooyi of PepsiCo or Ellen Kullman, the first woman CEO of 200-year-old Du Pont.)
“Clearly, women have a far stronger track record as career professionals heading organizations than as leaders of family businesses.”
However, it promises to be a bumpy road to the idyll of formalized and publicly recognized roles for women members of family businesses.
All too often, a woman's way to the top of a family business remains what might be called succession in extremis. It is neither planned nor the result of a deliberate grooming and initiation process. Examples abound, globally, of wives and daughters stepping up to assume leadership in crisis situations such as when the patriarch of a family business meets an untimely death. Recent Indian history and folklore are rich with examples of queens who assumed the mantle of monarchy, when their husbands were felled in battle.
And rather than make the switch wholesale to equality between children in the business, many families continue to experiment with a dizzying array of models, congruent to their view on how best women members should participate in family affairs. It is especially complex in cases where boundaries between the family and family business blur and, heaven bid, you introduce the subject of who gets what in the next generation. As Johann Lavater said, "Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him."
Let's sample the high profile, public spat between two brothers who carved between them the largest Indian private enterprise. So unwieldy were the proportions and sensitivities that courts as well as friends advised them to have their mother intervene and mediate. They were right! She was the only living person to possess absolute moral authority over both siblings and her decision(s) were honored. Yet even here her role seems to have its limits: Recently one sibling allegedly refused his mother's intervention in a dispute.
Given all this, what advice would this author give an 18-year-old heiress: family of professional career?
For me, trying to answer this question is akin to Dante's ninth circle of hell. Fortunately no bright, young and talented member of a family business has entrusted their career path to my counsel. Instead, this sticky question was posed (ostensibly as a piece of devil's advocacy) by an interviewee for this article.
In the Indian scenario (not that the western hemisphere would be significantly different), our hypothetical young lady has two options.
She could join the family business at a senior, though typically non-functional role. In the event of a sad circumstance or firefighting, she might be thrust into the forefront of business only to be replaced once the crisis is averted, and then finally be banished to elevated counsel/mentor status or corporate philanthropy.
Or, she could join a respected organization as a middle management executive, slowly rise up the ladder, or switch jobs and employers at will. Finally, she might retire as the CEO/top cat of the organization in the twilight of her career.
Clearly, women have a far stronger track record as career professionals heading organizations than as leaders or CEOs of family businesses. One would struggle to find fitting examples of the latter. Some would deduce that female members are not taken as seriously in their family enterprises as they would be as professionals.
It's hard to disagree with that: The fact remains that many patriarchs of large, respected family businesses continue to resist bringing daughters into the active/front line management of the business. A respected entrepreneur from a proud tradition of family business confirms: "We don't involve daughters in family business. Period."
This stand, of course, is getting increasingly difficult to defend, especially with laws pronouncing daughters equal owners of the family business.
Daughters can play a role in all this: If they don't assert themselves or demonstrate interest in furthering the mercantile legacy, then maybe they are not the right choice to be head of a family firm. But frequently, these daughters aren't put through the same grooming process that their male peers are subjected to from an early stage so holding them responsible is a tough call.
So, what do the tea leaves foretell for the future?
As best as this author can decipher, signs are that women leaders in professional circles, and the few examples in family circles, have silenced the cynics. Succession laws will require that women be taken seriously as partners in the future. And observers interviewed for this article largely agree that whether behind the scenes, or at the forefront of the family business, women members will continue to influence the form and function of businesses and organizations. As the transition progresses, new business houses will probably be quicker to involve women, and adapt to new practices, than their more established counterparts.
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