Attracting talent to family-owned businesses: The perceptions of MBA students

Lucia Ceja and Josep Tapies ()
Additional contact information
Lucia Ceja: IESE Business School, Postal: Research Division, Av Pearson 21, 08034 Barcelona, SPAIN
Josep Tapies: IESE Business School, Postal: Research Division, Av Pearson 21, 08034 Barcelona, SPAIN

No D/815, IESE Research Papers from IESE Business School

Abstract: This paper examines the perceptions that MBA students hold regarding family-owned businesses compared to non-family firms. The study is based on the assumption that attracting talent is critical not only for continuous competitive advantage, but also for the survival of family-owned businesses. Therefore, family-owned firms should promote themselves as equally attractive as non-family organizations in terms of employment opportunities. MBA graduates represent a rich pool of talent that can help family-owned firms to prosper across generations. One avenue of inquiry in this regard is to study MBA students and their perceptions. Consequently, studying whether MBA students hold a specific image regarding family-owned businesses is brought to the forefront. With this aim, the authors engaged in an enquiry process, dealing with MBA students' perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of family-owned firms compared to non-family businesses. The sample was composed of 213 MBA students from 20 different countries. The results showed that MBA students do indeed hold a particular image regarding family-owned firms. More specifically, some of the findings are that MBA students perceive family-owned firms as having more problems within the ownership than non-family businesses, are not as good as non-family firms in attracting talented managers, have less job rotation, are slower in their internationalization processes, are slower in the implementation of new technologies, have more difficulty in issuing equity and have a later retirement age than non-family firms. Limitations of the study and future research are discussed.

Keywords: family-owned businesses; non-family firms; MBA students; talent; perceptions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2009-08-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0815-E.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0815

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IESE Research Papers from IESE Business School IESE Business School, Av Pearson 21, 08034 Barcelona, SPAIN. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Noelia Romero ().