Why Some Family Firms Need a Scapegoat

The Lowrey family owns an elite private school on 150 acres of land in California's Orange County. Along with the parents, Bill and Mary, the school's founders, three of the Lowreys' married children are members of the administrative staff; the fourth, the only daughter, owns a business with her husband. They all have houses on the property, and the families eat together almost every night—except for the oldest son, Randy, 35, and his wife, Mara.

Randy, who is dean of admissions, feels that he is suffocating. While he and his wife prefer to live on the school property, for both financial reasons and convenience, they want to have a life of their own. The rest of the family interprets this distance as a rejection. They say Randy has “always been different” and “he thinks he's superior to the rest of us.” Though Randy is a good manager and a hard worker, the family continually finds fault with his work. Meetings of the school staff have gotten to be nothing more than occasions for family arguments, mostly focused around complaints about Randy's recruitment policies.

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