How 1,100 Family Firms Grappled with Covid-19

For family firms, the Covid 19 experience has been compared to being battlefield doctors: they are surrounded by trauma and uncertainty, and forced to make decisions without any precedent to guide them. Yet in the crisis, some families are pulling together, communicating better and discovering strengths that have made their businesses more resilient. Others are finding that the crisis has amplified underlying weaknesses and conflict, and are not doing as well. 

A group of international family business scholars and researchers set out to find out how family businesses were faring during this global crisis. They gathered input from approximately 1,100 family firms around the world. In the podcast below, University of North Carolina-Charlotte Professor Torsten Pieper, one of the study's authors and the editor of the Journal of Family Business Strategy, discusses key findings with Loughborough University Professor Mat Hughes, who has produced a series of podcasts about family businesses.

Read more about this study here.