Seminar: Family Business and Entrepreneurship Research

This seminar aims at preparing students for conducting academic research on family businesses. A specific focus will be on excelling in literature reviews.

The seminar will start with an introduction day that combines an input lecture with an in-class discussion. Topics will be the following:

-        What are family businesses and what makes them unique?

-        Theories to describe family businesses

-        What is academic research – and what isn’t academic research?

-        How to conduct a literature review?

The students will then form groups of two and choose a family business-related topic. Over the course of the seminar, their task is to conduct an academic literature review on the chosen topic and to briefly propose a research project based on it.

The mid-slot of the seminar will be dedicated to the following topics:

-        Open discussion and feedback: What is working well? What are the challenges?

-        Input lecture on “how to write a paper” and discussion

The students will then continue working on their literature reviews. The third and last slot of the seminar will be dedicated to presentations and discussions thereof.

1. Understand the current challenges of family businesses
2. Learn how family businesses could benefit from megatrends
3. Increase their teamwork, analysis, problem solution, and communication skills by applying them in practice
4. Creatively develop new solutions, e.g., by applying design thinking approaches, and by experiencing a “sharing” environment.

-        Discussion

-        Input lecture

-        Presentation 20%

-        Q&A 15%