Students in the nation's business schools learn a bewildering range of facts about the realities of modern business life, but there is one word they are unlikely to hear in the classroom: family.
"Business schools tend to avoid talking about family-run businesses, or they screen out the family influence in family firms," says Frank Hoy, Paul R. Beswick Professor of Innova- tion and Entrepreneurship at WPI. "They try to focus on rational decision making, and they don't view family busi- nesses as rational enterprises." Hoy is a pioneer in the relatively young field of schol- arship on family-owned businesses. Through several books, including Entrepreneurial Family Firms (2010) and Small Business Management (2012), dozens of articles, and col- laborations with colleagues around the world, Hoy has explored how family businesses sustain themselves and thrive, and how they manage the transition from one generation to the next. He says this research is more than academic.
Frank Hoy, an authority on family-owned businesses, has spent many hours in corporate boardrooms as part of WPI's participation in a global project to learn from such firms.
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