Location:

Jyvaskyla, Finland

Program Type:

Full Degree

Degree Level:

Master

Specialty:

Entrepreneurship

Program Overview

Program Description:

Family Business Track offers a distinctive opportunity to learn about the unique challenges of closely-held firms with academic professionals and peers. This programme is an internationally recognized "think tank" for present or forthcoming family business owners, successors, family members and key non-family managers and advisors, a programme to learn family entrepreneurship and family business governance. In Family Business, business principals and actors are related by kinship or marriage, ownership is combined with managerial control and family relations, and ownership and/or management are transferred to the next generation. Gradually, at least two generations are present or have been in business. New entrepreneurial firms are not often started with the explicit objective of becoming a family business. They rather evolve into a family business if and when a new generation becomes involved in operations. On both sides of Atlantic as well as in Asia, family firms are the most effective drivers of economies. Running family business requires special attitudes and capabilities that can be learned. This track in the University of Jyväskylä, School of Business and Economics, is a tailored curriculum and academic programme leading to Master's and Doctoral degrees with a special attention to family entrepreneurship. Owning and operating a family business is both rewarding and demanding whether it is large or small. The track has been designed to enhance the birth, development and continuity of family businesses. A special challenge for family firms is to maintain their entrepreneurial drive over generations. The continuity necessitates strategic renewal, and, consequently, every generation should re-invent entrepreneurship in owning and managing family business. Business and family issues which so often overlap will be examined and discussed. Thus, another major challenge is to keep the family dimension in harmony with the business and ownership dimension.