Developing Academic Skills for Business and Management - Term Paper Example

Developing academic skills for Business and Management Part A Literature Review A unique set of opportunities offered by the Asia Pacific region exists on the field of Asian family enterprises and family business. It aimed at facilitating research in the field. Although family owned enterprise are common to many countries in the Asia pacific region, but the conditions under which each of these individual enterprises operate differ substantially from one enterprise to other. This difference in the conditions offers a unique research area for the research scholars (James, Jennings & Breitkruz, 2012). What is more exciting is the fact that much research still needs to be done in this particular field and there is ample scope of future research. Between 1996 and 2010 a lot of research has taken place in the field of family owned business and a lot of theory has been developed (James, Jennings & Breitkruz, 2012). Now a new breed of researchers wants to validate those findings and theories by their research on Asia based family owned business. This new field of research is essential to validate or negate the findings of researchers in the field who have researched on similar enterprises in other countries. This new lot of researches aims to find out whether the previous finds are universal and robust in their conclusion or are particular and country specific, or in other words specific to the western world. According to Johns’ (2006) research into the field of family owned business it has been increasingly found that that there has been lot of research on the business enterprises but the researches on family owned business have slowly disappeared. This goes hand in hand with the real life situation where family owned businesses are slowly losing their relevance and are being converted to professionally managed business. James, Jennings and Breitkruz suggested and invited other scholars to indulge in more research in the field to research into the subject to understand the association between family and their business (James, Jennings & Breitkruz, 2012). Another thing that is important to study in the field of family business particularly with respect to Asian countries is the role of context in shaping this family business. By context it is meant over here the circumstances or conditions that influences or the influencing factors in the family business. It is important to note that although the overall characteristics and conditions of business environment is similar to the countries present in the Asia pacific region , there still exists subtle differences. For example, in underdeveloped countries families are often short of employment opportunities and so they involve themselves in small business ventures. The differences arise due to the fact that each of the countries has a different history, culture and background to their existence. By culture, it is meant the cultural differences between countries. Cultures vary across work culture, expectations from the organizations, work environment and business ethics. The study of context and its effects is important because according to a leading researcher the context can have powerful effects on the organization and its performance (Johns, 2006). To understand the effect of context a review of journals in this field of research easily demonstrates that the result of financial performance widely varies according to context. Here contexts like location; environment is a major determining factor in the analysis of financial performance of different family owned business as pointed out by researchers in the field (Amit & Villalonga, 2013). To study the effect of context on several families owned businesses across various countries the researchers have taken various contexts to study their respective effects on family businesses. For example, Su and Lee (2013) used the government rule in Taiwan formed after the Asian financial crisis that companies must appoint an external director. The researchers focussed their research to identify amongst the two groups of firms that adopted the regulation before and after the ruling came into existence and their capability and willingness to take risk (Su and Lee 2013). They concluded that appointment of external director may hinder the effect of financial crisis. Similarly another group of researchers have researched in the field of how changing industrial environment influences the amount of long term investments by the businesses in the Japanese electric industry. Similarly, Saxena in his secondary research in the Indian context tries to find out how large family businesses have emerged and managed to grow from the period before independence to the period after independence (Saxena, 2013). Another field that has particularly received very less attention is entrepreneurship in the context of family owned business. The process of taking an initiative to start a new business is defined as entrepreneurship. To maintain an entrepreneurship spirit is particularly relevant in the context of business. The firms must maintain entrepreneurship spirit to sustain their risk taking ability as the firms tends to become risk avoiders as they mature (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). However, family oriented business or businesses managed by family face additional challenges in this regard. In family owned business power is very centrally concentrated and how these firms tend to maintain entrepreneurial spirit over the span of generations should be a major area of research. According to some scholars family owned and managed businesses offer a perfect setting where entrepreneurship flourishes. Other scholars differ in their conclusion and according to them family owned business and firms are characterised by a rigid mindset and thus lack entrepreneurial spirit. However most researchers generally agree to the view that this field in particular i.e. how is entrepreneurship cultivated and maintained over generations in case of a family owned business needs a lot of attention. The research topic that needs particular attention is 1. What facilitates the development and sustenance of entrepreneurship spirit in case of family run business? 2. What are the factors that contribute and lead to continuation of entrepreneurship spirit across generations? It has been found in the volume of research materials that have been investigated in the field of family owned businesses there has been very few or no research in the identification of entrepreneurship and family business group. The lack of interests of researchers in this field can be cited as the reason. However there is no dearth of research papers that underline the role of families in wealth creation. Families often play an important role in the creation of new ventures, however in the literature on entrepreneurship field that is widely present the role of families is neglected and kept aside. Entrepreneurship as a subject is absent in the field of research into the family owned business scenario (Morris, 2011). However the problem with majority of research in the field is that the researches have been conducted keeping in view of the firms of western countries. Very few studies have focussed on firms in the Asia- Pacific region or Africa. The third thing needed to be discussed is the definition of family owned business that has been used in most of these researches. At the heart of the situation is to identify the amount of involvement of family members in the business. It has been a predominant thought that family members vote collectively in the family owned businesses. But recent researches in this field have shown this generalization as incorrect. Researchers have recently tried to study the effect of different family members on the family business. The major literature that exists in this field aims to study several factors with respect of family owned business such as corporate governance, succession, economic performance etc. Governance in the context of family owned businesses focuses on how financial, emotional, cultural and family aspect of business is central in achievement of success. Some researchers have used extensive interviews of top executives in the family business domain to know how their businesses have worked and managed to survive over the decades. The researchers have tried to identify good governance strategies that have helped particular organizations to survive and sustain over the years (Schmid, Rouvinez & Poza, 2013). They have discussed these strategies so that other family businesses too can emulate theses strategies so that they are able to tide over difficult situations in their respective businesses as they arise are able to be successful in the long run. This field of research is pretty exciting to the researchers due to the fact that there is ample scope for researches in this field. Financial condition and National income of the countries in the Asia Pacific region in particular is hugely influenced by family owned businesses (Schmid, Rouvinez & Poza, 2013). Another important factor to be noted is that almost each one of these different countries differs from each other with respect to culture, history, and societal conditions etc. So the researchers can perform a lot of research that enquires into the question how each of these different factors influence the growth of family owned business and their management. For example, the countries of India and Japan have totally different culture and traditions. The India culture has a rich background while Japan is influenced by the western world. This field of research is relevant to the fact that as established by empirical evidence condition of a particular region or a country has a great impact on the development and management of family owned businesses in different countries. The research in this field is all the more important and interesting due to the fact that although the number of family owned businesses is dwindling in no., still there exists a lot of successful family owned businesses. The concern in case of a family owned businesses are whether the firm will be able to maintain entrepreneurial spirit? What changes in leadership will take place from one generation to other? How will the businesses be able to maintain fairness? Part B Team Working Introduction Team work refers to work done in parts by several members of a group. The parts that each member does are small in themselves but the collective result of all the parts combined together brings out a very good final result. In our project that we had to do as part of this module a report writing assignment on a chosen subject area. While writing the report I in particular had to collaborate with other team members. Discussion For effective execution of a big task in hand it is always preferable to break it down in smaller task. While accomplishing our particular task we too decided to rely on team work as the effective tool to success and efficiency. In choosing my team I had to keep in mind that I share a mental and emotional compatibility with other members of my team which would result in understanding each other’s sentiments and in competition of the task effectively and efficiently. As part of building compatibility among the team members we started spending more time together other than the time that we had to spend for doing the project work. We were already good friends as we had to ensure that in order to ensure mental and emotional compatibility. But over the course of this project what we noticed is that we became very good friends. We knew lot about each other’s secrets and how the other member of the team proffered to work. There were several stages in our formation and execution of the project by our team. The four broad stages faced by us were forming, storming, norming and adjourning (Dawidowicz, 2010). We decided to form this group or team with the view of this particular project. As I have mentioned before the team members we choose for the project were all in the friend circle and we already shared a mood mental and emotional bonding with each other. However in the initial stages particularly there existed lot of conflict situations and there were lot of conflicts that rose. Most of these conflicts revolved around the discussion about who will be leading the group and who will be performing what tasks relent to the success of the projects. It took some before these disputes got finally resolved. A positive side of the disputes was that it gave us a clear leader who would resolve all the problems that arose amicably in all the later stages to come. As our group settled down after the initial conflict days we began to understand each other’s in a far better way. In fact we came to know facts about each other that were not known to us before and wouldn’t have been known if we weren’t part of this group. Conclusion After the project completion there came a time when we had to leave the group. After spending so many days in the group it was really a sad moment for me in particular. Looking forward to future I hope that I will be able to evolve better as a team player and hone my skills further in this regard. Building a literature review Introduction Literature review is actually a brief account of the vast amount of literature by eminent scholars on a particular research field. The main aim of a literature review is to base a research on a particular subject by building on the research that already exists in the particular field. Discussion While doing a literature review for my report I had to study the online literature that is available in this field. I found out that there is a dearth of quality online research and journals that existed in the field. Most of the literature that existed focussed on businesses but did not give good attention to family owned businesses. In addition the majority of research journals that exists in the field focus on the family owned business that exists in the western world. The researches have given very little attention to the firms located in the Asia Pacific region and Africa. So there is a lot of scope of research that exists in the field. Particularly there is a wide scope for research in context of family owned businesses in Asia Pacific region especially to find out how they are run and what the factors that influence the running of the company. The researchers have found that context plays a major role in influencing how decisions are taken in a family owned businesses and have cited several references to the fact. Traditionally the research in this field have tried to associate factors such as governance, succession etc. with business structure. Researchers had traditionally believed that all the members of the family think in like terms and act in similar ways. But recent researches in this field have proven this generalization to be false. They have found so by analyzing the particular case of Philippines and Japan (Dawidowicz, 2010). Another field of research that the researchers have delved into is the question of how entrepreneurship is shaped in a family owned business. There has been lot of conflict in this area of research with some researchers believing and supporting the view that family fosters and encourages entrepreneurship whereas there are other breeds of researchers who oppose this view. The second breed believes that family does not help in developing entrepreneurial qualities. In my literature review I have tried to focus not only on the researches done by several researchers in the field but have tried to focus on a critical analysis of their researches. Conclusion In doing my literature reviews I have studied works of other researchers and have found that this is an excellent field of research and this field of research can be explored if I delve into future research in the field. References Amit, R., & Villalonga, B. (2013). Financial performance of family firms. London: Sage. Dawidowicz, P. (2010). Literature reviews made easy: a quick guide to success. NY: IAP Eisenhardt, K.M. & Martin, J. A. (2000). Dynamic capabilities: What are they? Strategic management Journal. 21(11). pp. 1105-1121. James, A. E., Jennings, J. E., & Breitkruz, R. (2012). Worlds apart? Re-bridging the distance between family science and family business research. Family Business Review. 25(1). pp. 87-108. Johns, G. (2006). The essential impact of context on organizational behaviour. Academy of Management Review. 31(2). pp.386-408. Morris, M. J. (2011). Family enterprise in the Asia pacific: exploring transgenerational entrepreneurship in family firms. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing. Saxena, A. (2013). Transgenerational succession in business groups in India. Asia Pacific Journal of Management.30 (3).pp.769-789. Schmid, A. K., Rouvinez, D. K & Poza, E. (2013). Governance in family enterprises maximising economic and emotional success. London: Palgrave Macmillan Su, W. & Lee, C.Y. (2013). Effects of corporate governance on risk taking in Taiwanese family firms during institutional reform. Asia Pacific Journal of Management. 30(3). pp.809-828. West, M. A. & Markiewicz, L. (2008). Building team-based working: A practical guide to organizational transformation. Victoria: John Wiley & Sons. Read More