CUHK MBA Professor & Student Interviewed by The Peak Magazine: Learning the Family Way

In an interview with The Peak, Prof. Kevin Au, Director of the CFB and the Center for Entrepreneurship and an associate professor at the Department of Management at CUHK Business School, talks about a 14-week course that he has designed for the Business School’s MBA program, which includes case studies and discussions.

The Peak magazine has recently published a feature story titled “Learning the Family Way” in its May 2016 issue. The story looks at how family businesses tackle their challenges with the help of advisers, and why top universities and business schools are offering courses on family enterprises.

“[In the course,] I talk about issues not just from the family business perspective, but also from the perspective of people who are working for or with family businesses. [We cover] the sort of things they need to pay attention to, and what sort of things could actually harm their clients if they don’t understand the family dynamics,” says Prof. Au.

Matthew Hsu, a part-time CUHK MBA student, who is working for an international company specializing in information technology services, says that he is taking a family business course as he focuses on China business at his job, and expects mainland family businesses to expand. He notes some of his classmates are encountering difficulties that originate from the complexity of family-related issues and need to learn how to help family businesses become sustainable across generations.

A key issue faced by family businesses is succession. Prof. Au has seen family members who were initially resistant to becoming involved with the family business develop new perspectives after taking his classes.

“Students started to realize there are opportunities and strengths in every family business. When they hear the professors in their classes say good things about family business, they become interested,” states Prof. Au.

“Business is about competition and family is about love. But in a family business, you have to merge the two,” says Prof. Au. “In academia, we call them ‘hybrid organizations.’” While this may sound like a tricky proposition, Prof. Au points out that family businesses have both strengths and weaknesses. “It’s like a social enterprise, which are also a type of hybrid organization. You combine the good sides of ‘social’ and ‘business’ and can do much better than just a pure form of business organization.”

Privately owned family businesses can also take a comparatively longer-term and more value-based approach than other companies. “In 2008, some really good text-book enterprises were not doing well, while some privately held businesses were doing very well,” says Prof. Au. In the early 2000s, there were some influential papers that compared family businesses and public companies and found that family businesses could perform just as well, if not better, than the latter, arousing a lot of interest from academics, adds Prof. Au.

Note: Since 2013, the Center for Family Business (CFB) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School has collaborated with the Business Families Institute at Singapore Management University to provide a course for the Business School’s MBA program. In addition, the CFB offers conferences and workshops for families and a certificate program aimed at lawyers, accountants, directors and consultants who work with family businesses, in collaboration with the U.S.-based Family Firm Institute.

Media: The Peak
Section: Feature
Date published: May, 2016
Re: Prof. Kevin Au and Matthew Hsu (current part-time MBA student)