The Global Center for Family Enterprise (GCFE) focuses on the interplay between the “family” and the “enterprise”. The Center’s research focuses on three main research areas: Sustainability, New Technologies and Innovation and Strategy and Governance in Family Enterprises. It is of utmost importance for the GCFE to take an interdisciplinary research approach by incorporating diverse perspectives (e.g. psychological, sociological, economic and legal) to examine family enterprise behavior. The Center’s research is mostly evidence-based and its goal is to achieve academic excellence while researching highly relevant topics. It is also the Center’s mission not only to create but to disseminate knowledge within Germany, Europe and the world.
We examine the theory, conceptual underpinnings, and implications of sustainability for family enterprises. We apply a multi-dimensional approach on (corporate) sustainability and provide insights on how family enterprises can generate long-term value for their owners and stakeholders fostering companies’ longevity. Thereby, we take responsible leadership, business, innovation practices, and forward-looking training activities as the basis for family enterprises’ sustainable development. More specifically, we aim to better understand how family enterprises contribute to solving the grand societal challenges of the 21st century, promote gender equality, and how they effectively pursue responsible business activities. We focus also our interest on investigating topics such as sustainable entrepreneurship. We aim to understand how families can sustain their business for the long-run and across generations and develop the competences to adapt to structural and environmental changes in terms of adjusting their human capital, cognitive skills, and corporate governance structure to changing environmental demands.
New technologies, e.g., artificial intelligence (AI), digital technologies and block chain technology, are considered to be path-breaking drivers of organizational change and innovation in family enterprises. New ground-breaking technologies pose significant new challenges for organization in research and business, particularly with regard to responsible leadership, business and innovation practices, and social integrity. Family enterprises face the challenge to efficiently react to and shape these new technologies. We are interested in examining how family enterprises implement strategies, structures, and employee training using their unique competences to leverage the potential arising from these new technologies.
For instance, AI might lead to faster and more accurate decisions of managers while also having the ability to transform interactions between humans and AI within teams and organizations. We are interested in investigating how family enterprises can effectively deploy path-breaking technologies and aim to generate knowledge to how family enterprises of the 21st may look like. For example, we provide insights on managerial practices and strategies that help family enterprises to leverage disruptive technological changes, design technology-based forms of collaboration, and to effectively establish human-machine interaction.
Family enterprises are characterized by a unique governance structure. Those enterprises need to sustain competitive advantages in rapidly changing business environments with high uncertainty and time pressure. While the specific governance constellations of family enterprises having ownership and management within the family might diminish e.g., owners’ impatience and managerial short-termism, and agency costs, issues may arise due to company succession, nepotism, stakeholder interactions, and family conflicts. We are thus interested in understanding how governance (i.e., corporate governance, ownership and family governance) can be strategically employed to achieve competitive advantage and effective resource deployment within family enterprises. Hence, we investigate for instance topics such as strategic ownership, ownership competence, corporate and contract governance, and contract negotiations to ensure family enterprises’ long-term success.
Professors
Affiliate Members
Scientific Staff
Supporting Staff
On a regular basis, we invite internationally recognized researchers to present and discuss their newest research insights with our GCFE members. These research talks provide us with a unique opportunity to be at the verge of new research contributions. The research talks usually deal with topics related to entrepreneurship and family enterprise.
Past Research Talks
2025
Dr. Mohamed Genedy (Post-doc at Stockholm School of Economics): Research projects at the intersection of entrepreneurship and family enterprise using large-scale databases. Research Talk January 31 to February 14, 2025 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Felix Kaysers, M.Sc. (EM Lyon Business School): Terrorism and entrepreneurial entry: Evidence from Egypt. Research Talk on January 30, 2025 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Dr. Julian Schenkenhofer (University of Bergamo): Eponymous Family Name Trademarking and Firm Performance. Research Talk on January 13, 2025 at TUM Campus Heilbronn
2024
Dr. Irenaeus Wolff (Thurgau Institute of Economics at the University of Konstanz): (Gender) Inequality through Selection: The Case of Consistency“ (joint work with A. Chadi, U. Fischbacher, M. Hussien & K. Schmelz). Research Talk on November 19, 2024 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Dr. Mohamed Genedy (Post-doc at the House of Innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden): Navigating career choices in parent-owned businesses: The impact of offspring birth order on joining and leaving the parent’s business. Research Talk on July 25, 2024 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Prof. Dr. Philipp Sieger (Professor for Strategic Entrepreneurship at the Department of Management & Entrepreneurship at the University of Bern, Switzerland): Navigating success: Configurations of founder social identities and strategic entrepreneurship in new ventures. Research Talk on June 27, 2024 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
2023
Prof. Dr. Vangelis Souitaris (Professor of Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School London, UK): What if you leave me now? The short and long term consequences of founder exit after IPO. Research Talk on June 22, 2023 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Prof. Dr. Karl Wennberg (Barbara Bergström Chair in Educational Leadership and Excellence at the Department of Management and Organization at Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden): How diversified should our founding team be? Insights from simulating the tradeoff between performance and the risk of disruption. Research Talk on Apr 26, 2023 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Prof. Dr. Matthias Waldkirch (Assistant Professor at EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht and director of the new Entrepreneurship & Family Firm Institute (EFFI)): Research on innovation and professionalization processes in family firms, dynamics around ownership and change, and how organizational phenomena unfold in digital spaces. Research Talk on Jan 24, 2023 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
2022
Prof. Dr. Xu Li (Assistant professor of Strategy and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark ): Research on organizational hybridization. Research Talk on Nov 3, 2022 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Prof. Dr. Grégoire Croidieu (Professor of Entrepreneurship, Emlyon business school, France): Research on how institutional persistence unfolds. Research Talk on Oct 11, 2022 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Prof. Dr. Stephen Zhang (Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Adelaide, Australien): Too distressed to lead their businesses toward CSR activities: Entrepreneurs’ mental distress and their businesses’ CSR under the COVID-19 crisis. Research Talk on Sep 28, 2022 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Prof. Dr. Dietmar Fehr (Professor of Economics, University Heidelberg, Germany):Perceived Relative Wealth and Risk Taking. Research Talk on May 18, 2022 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
2021
Prof. Dr. Vangelis Souitaris (Professor of Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School London, UK): Specialist versus generalist founders’ experience and fundraising at IPO. Research Talk on November 30, 2021 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Prof. Dr. Karl Wennberg (Department of Organization and Management at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden): Family Vulnerability and Gender Homophily in Male-Led Ventures. Research Talk on September 28, 2021 at TUM Campus Heilbronn.
2020
Dr. Johannes Kleinhempel (University of Manchester, Presidential Fellow at the Institute for PMO Comparative & International Business): Cultural Roots of Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Second-generation Immigrants. Research Talk on October 20, 2020 at the TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Ed Saiedi (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Industrial Economics and Management): Turned Down in a Downturn? Real Effects of Not Securing Capital in the Global Financial Crisis. Research Talk on October 16, 2020 at the TUM Campus Heilbronn.
Based on our recent publication "von Nitzsch, J., Bird, M. & Saiedi, E. (forthcoming). The strategic role of owners in firm growth: Contextualizing ownership competence in private firms. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal".
Project studies can be either a research or a practical project carried out by a student team in collaboration with a company. The companies provide students with hands-on experience in the context of a specific project. A project study normally consists of teamwork of 2 to 5 students with a project duration of 3 months (full-time).
Find more about other project studies on the TUM Job Board.
Currently there are no vacancies at the Global Center for Family Enterprise.
