WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.
Issue link: http://wpiresearch.epubxp.com/i/90696
Case Studies in Success "Some of the world's most successful companies are family-owned," Hoy says. "Among them are 30 percent of the Fortune 500 firms, including Fidelity, Marriott, and Wal-Mart. Business giants like Ford and IBM trace their roots back to family enterprises. As business scholars, we should be asking what these companies are doing that helps them prosper." In 2011, WPI was offered an extraordinary opportunity to begin asking that question on a global scale. Thanks, in large part, to Hoy's reputation, the university was invited to become one of 10 North American universities to join the Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Prac- tices (STEP) project headquartered at Babson College. Through STEP, research teams from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America are creating a shared database that currently includes more than 95 case studies of multi- generational family-owned businesses worldwide. In addition to Hoy, the STEP team at WPI includes fellow Business School faculty members Chickery "Chick" Kasouf, associate professor of marketing, and Adrienne Hall Phillips, assistant professor of marketing; Hansong Pu, a visiting lecturer who also directs an entrepreneurship and business center at China's Hangzhou University; and Kimberly Eddleston, associate professor of entrepreneur- ship and innovation in Northeastern University's College of Business Administration. The team has completed its first two case studies, both of which focus on companies with longstanding ties to WPI. Morgan Construction, a maker of rolling mills and other machinery for the steel industry, was founded in the 1880s by Charles Hill Morgan, the first superintendent of WPI's Washburn Shops. It was run by five generations of Morgans before the company agreed to be sold to Siemens VAI in 2008. Spirol, which makes engineered fasteners, has ties to three families, including the Prym family, which started the oldest family-owned business in Germany. Located in Northeast Connecticut, Spirol has been led throughout its 60-year history by members of the Koehl family, including Hans Koehl, a 1956 WPI graduate, the recently retired CEO, and his son Jeffrey, the current CEO. To prepare the case studies, WPI researchers spent several months conducting structured interviews with key corporate personnel, including family and non-family members, using a lengthy questionnaire prepared for the STEP project. The result of this exhaustive process was a detailed analysis of each firm's history, status, vision, gover- nance, marketing practices, and more. While the case histories, which are currently being reviewed by the Morgan and Koehl families, will remain confidential, Hoy says they will be available to members of the STEP consortium for research purposes. The database " Through its global projects program and globally diverse student body, WPI already gives students a tremendous introduction to the global society in which they will live, work, and hopefully prosper." — Adrienne Hall Phillips [19]