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Hire Who? What? Pass the Spinach

Published May 1, 1990 David Graulich |

When business schools teach case studies about family business, a favorite technique is to create a scenario at the family dinner table. Unlike managers of other businesses, who have their big meeting...

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Spinning Off Some Company Assets: A Capital Idea

Published May 1, 1990 Francois M. de Visscher |

Capital needs of a family and its business can clash, as CEO Dave Watkins learned at the last meeting of the 17 family shareholders of Watkins Construction Company in Dublin, Idaho. All but two wante...

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The Politics of Family Boards

Published May 1, 1990 Peter Davis |

One of the boards I serve on engages regularly in a kind of ritualistic jousting with the founder and CEO. We try to show him that he can't continue to violate the most basic of management principles...

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Hooray for Our Team!

Published May 1, 1990 Neil Cohen |

Watt Powell Park is an old concrete and steel ballpark that sits humbly on the banks of the Kanawha River, which runs through the center of Charleston, West Virginia. Beyond the center field fence lo...

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How to Benefit from Creative Use of an ESOP

Published May 1, 1990 David L. James |

An employee stock ownership plan is not just a way to reward longstanding, loyal employees with a stake in the business. Creatively employed, it can bring significant tax benefits to owners and employ...

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Just Sell High, Buy Back Low, and Watch Your Sales Triple

Published May 1, 1990 Dan Rottenberg |

Like many other family businesses, Ram Golf Corporation arrived in 1974 at a seemingly inescapable fork in the road. For 26 years, under the direction of three Hansberger brothers, the suburban Chicag...

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A Death in the Business

Published April 1, 1990 Dan Rottenberg |

Until he got married at the age of 40, Alan Hassenfeld's friends and colleagues wondered whether he'd ever settle down. While his buttoned-down older brother Stephen ran Hasbro Inc., the Rhode Island...

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How to Negotiate a Compensation Plan, Painlessly

Published April 1, 1990 Donald J. Jonovic |

"McElvany's asking too much," Sam Bensen told me. Sam was founder of Bensen Steel Co., a steel service center in Illinois. Jack McElvany, his controller, had been with him for eight years, and had sta...

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Can You Keep A Secret? Maybe You Shouldn't

Published April 1, 1990 Kenneth Kaye |

It was unusual for my old friend Walter Waitingame to phone at 8:30 on a Sunday night — unusual and inconvenient, just when the kids are getting their second wind and it's my night to give them thei...

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What the Levys Learned from Disaster

Published April 1, 1990 Barbara B. Buchholz |

The business started out as a junk shop on New York City's Lower East Side, founded by two brothers-in- law, John Ginsburg and Isaac M. Levy. It grew into one of the nation's most distinguished antiq...

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Customer Service, Family Style

Published April 1, 1990 Howard Muson |

Stew Lenard, watch out. The Kowalskis of St. Paul, Minnesota, may steal your crown as the champion of customer service among the nation's grocery markets.Jim Kowalski and his wife, Mary Anne, bought t...

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Why We Failed at Succession: A Son's View

Published April 1, 1990 James C. Farah |

My father has not wanted to see me or speak with me since August 1988, and my last board meeting. Although I left Farah Inc. first in 1977, so I would not to have to directly oppose my father, he h...

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Why It's Better to Buy Out Than to Receive

Published April 1, 1990 Mike Cohn |

Gifting the business to "the kids" may well create more problems than it solves. Steve Bradshaw owned three successful funeral homes. As he approached 65, he wanted to spend less time in the business ...

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Daughters-In-Law: Navigating in Troubled Waters

Published April 1, 1990 Gerald Le Van |

Pity the daughter-in-law. Her life is bound up with the family business, but she is not part of it. She feels all of the upheavals and tensions, and is often called on to bandage the psychic wounds o...

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Stock Wars: What's Behind the Feud at Campbell

Published April 1, 1990 Peter Davis |

The public seems to have an insatiable appetite for drama in the family lives of the rich and powerful. Perhaps as we read about the latest family feud among the privileged few, it gives us a feeling ...

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Hammond Maps A New Course

Published April 1, 1990 Stephen J. Simurda |

Five years ago, Caleb Dean Hammond III and Kathleen D. Hammond learned just how important their family business was to them. The lesson came as they realized how valuable their map and atlas company ...

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A Thinking Man's Outfit

Published April 1, 1990 Family Business |

As CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., Robert Haas presides over a multinational family-controlled company that is almost as well-known for caring about people as for its blue jeans. The company went publ...

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The Hidden Side-Effects of Perk Addiction

Published March 1, 1990 Donald J. Jonovic |

Here's a pop quiz: Closely held companies are run for profit:( )Yes ( )No ( )It depends.If you guessed "It depends," you guessed right—it depends on what you mean by "profit." Is that new branch off...

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Quality Time

Published March 1, 1990 Barbara B. Buchholz |

"Look at the way this is made, John." Eulan McSwain is standing in the prefabricated shed where he and his son, Mike, and their staff of four make furniture. Eulan, a short, ruddy man with bright, de...

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Getting Off the Daughter Track

Published March 1, 1990 Jayne A. Pearl-Hommel |

When Irving Perlman, owner of Louis Perlman & Sons, died in October 1988, a local newspaper in western Massachusetts ran a story entitled, "The demise of the Perlman firm: All the Perlman men are...

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