ABSTRACT
Successful multigenerational family businesses live by a profound sense that their business is not a personal possession, but rather a trust that has been given to them for safekeeping and for which they have deep caring and respect. The owners of these firms, among the longest lasting and most prominent companies worldwide, view the business more as a responsibility of stewardship than as the privilege of proprietorship. It always seems that in spite of differences, conflict, and even divisions, their stewardship responsibility brings them back to center, back to unity of focus and effort. It tempers proprietary interests that typically revolve around the old viewpoints of “What’s in it for me?” or “It’s mine and I can do what I want with it.” In early October 1997, at the annual conference of the Family Business Network in the Hague, Mr. B. Puech, a fifth-generation owner of the Hermés company, made the following statement in accepting the distinguished Family Business Award from the International Institute of Management Development. Before an international audience of over two hundred family businesses, Mr. Puech confided, “We in the fifth generation of the Hermés do not view ourselves as owners of the company, we are merely taking care of it for our children.” What a remarkable and compelling statement of the orientation of stewardship in family business. For families like those who own the Hermes company and who embrace the orientation of stewardship, there is almost a sense of sacred trust akin to that of a parent. As parents we co-create life, but we do not own our children, rather we nurture them into being independent and healthy individuals. For stewardship-oriented business-owning families there is an appreciation of the business as a gift, not one deserved or to which they were entitled, but one which they accept and treasure with respect and gratitude as a family heirloom and legacy. The business and their managers have a clear sense of attachment and personal investment in the company’s purpose and values to the extent that their allegiance and loyalty are to the business more than to the founder or owning family. In other words, these families have an answer as to why all of the trouble is worth it, and their answers are bigger than the individual proprietary interests.
