Launch of “Managing Your Family Business” MBA Course

This past January, the Drucker School Global Family Business Institute (out of the Drucker School of Management), based in Claremont, California, launched its inaugural “Managing Your Family Business” MBA course in partnership with Finley & Associates. The 14-week course explores the corporate management, family issues, career paths and options, as well as the personal issues that are often unique to family-owned and managed businesses through real family cases every week. Family businesses featured range from all over the globe including: Japan, India, Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, and the United States. The course develops participants’ understandings through exposure to organizational models and skill development to address the challenges family businesses and families owning these businesses face.

“The majority of businesses everywhere are family-controlled and family-managed. Yet management books and management courses deal almost entirely with the publicly-owned and professionally-managed company – they rarely as much as mention the family-managed business.” – Peter Drucker

Topics Covered:

This course is designed for graduate students interested in family business as well as business family members and those professionals that advise or work within family businesses. Participants with an undergraduate degree and work experience join MBA students at the Drucker School of Management remotely and synchronously. The Canadian cohort currently has participants from Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto.

Dr. Donna Finley, a practitioner and academic with over 35 years of management and family business experience, is honoured to co-facilitate the course alongside her long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Vijay Sathe, the current C.S. & D.J. Davidson Chair and Professor of Management at the Peter Drucker Graduate School of Management.

More about the Drucker School Global Family Business Institute:

Mission: To unite world-class experts in family business governance with successors and representatives of family businesses from around the globe for a comprehensive graduate program in management and executive training.

Vision: The Institute will be the flagship academic institute of the Drucker School, seeking to attract students and family businesses throughout the world. Its programs will address the issues and opportunities of family businesses: managing the family name, succession planning, innovation, corporate responsibility, governance, finance, and sustainability.

More: www.cgu.edu

More about Peter F. Drucker:

Peter F. Drucker is considered the father of modern management, and his time-tested doctrine is the cornerstone of the education at the Drucker School. As a writer, teacher, consultant, and unparalleled management guru, Drucker influenced governments, non-profits, and corporations. He taught at Claremont Graduate University from 1971 until 2003, passing away two years later at the age of 95. The Drucker name commands international respect because his management philosophy makes sense, gets results, and empowers everyone in an organization to make a lasting difference.

More about Dr. Vijay Sathe

Professor Sathe was previously on the faculty of the Harvard Business School for ten years and taught occasionally at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, prior to joining the Drucker School Faculty.

Professor Sathe is an expert in the areas of leadership and cultural change, building winning executive teams, and revitalization of the organization and self. He has published numerous articles and several books including: Culture and Related Corporate Realities (Irwin) and with Phyllis Schlesinger, Leonard Schlesinger, and John Kotter, Organization (Irwin), Corporate Entrepreneurship: Top Managers and New Business Creation, and Manage Your Career: 10 Keys to Survival and Success When Interviewing and On the Job. His latest book is Strategy & Competitiveness in Latin American Markets: The Sustainability Frontier (co-edited with Urs Jager, Edward Elgar).

Professor Sathe has advised and coached top executives and others in a variety of enterprises, including: entrepreneurial start-ups, domestic and multinational corporations, professional service, non-profit and volunteer organizations, and government agencies.

He has taught courses in organizational behavior, revitalization of the organization and self, leadership, strategy, managing in the creative economy, and most recently the course “Managing Your Family Business”. Professor Sathe has taught in a number of MBA, executive education, industry-specific and corporate programs around the world and has received the “Professor of the Year” award from the Drucker MBA and Executive MBA graduating classes seven times in recognition of his outstanding teaching.