ABSTRACT
Research into leadership has been prolific since the inception of scientific management in the 1920s (Bass, 1981). Few researchers, however, agree on what constitutes effective leadership and few discuss specifics of leadership in family business. Given the variety of circumstances that family businesses find themselves in, it is recognised that there may not be one best way to manage a family business and more research may ‘prove fruitful in helping to understand what leadership approaches make sense in the context of a family firm’ (Dyer, 1994a: 111). Of particular interest in the family business context is the potential for the family members to be exposed to the business from an early age, perhaps during school vacations. Leadership development, therefore, can take on a different meaning with the development and training of family members sometimes being taken for granted, or left to chance.
