In Praise of Nepotism

This logic is at the heart of Bellow's conception of nepotism, which he means to rescue from the near-universal scorn it suffers today. Son of Nobel-winning.
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People don't want to acknowledge how much nepotism plays a role in their own lives. We want to think of ourselves as self-made men and women. People in other parts of the world don't understand that. They ask why Americans put parents in old folks homes and children move thousands of miles away and allow our families to fall apart. What we're experiencing is a swing of the pendulum away from radical individualism and back to the family.

For the last several decades we've focused on the entrepreneur as the ideal businessman. He's a Lone Ranger figure, with maybe a loyal Tonto at his side, but certainly no relatives. He hacks out a homestead, fights off the Indians. He's independent in the image of John Wayne. That's the ideal, but it's not really the American way, which is in actuality the family business tradition. You see it in the Westerns, where so many of the ranchers were Irish immigrants and very family oriented. I have a section in my book on the West.

All the criminals - the James' Gang, for example - were part of criminal families. Law enforcement was also family-based.

In Praise of Nepotism by Adam Bellow

If you were sheriff, you hired your brother as deputy, like Wyatt Earp and his brothers. There was an old nepotism that has changed since WWII. Before that, in most family businesses, you kept it in the family. There's a well-known group of families in Boston, for example, who built the New England textile industry.

Nepotism, a hindrance to progress

But it wasn't just an upper class phenomenon. The same thing was done among immigrants.

Family members would come over from other countries at different points, and they didn't come as individuals but as families and ethnic groups. They habitually relied on extended families to get credit and for manpower and markets. All the ethnic groups created their own independent economies, and when businesses became successful they broke out of their ethnic economy. And that's how most nationally successful businesses started, as a family business.

But we forget all of this. People can't remember when they weren't in the middle class. They can't remember how they got here. The old nepotism was discredited by the Crash of '29 and the Depression. People began to feel that the American business elite was too nepotistic, they had gotten rich and given out partnerships to sons and sons in law, they allowed family interests to outweigh business rationale. It was the subtext of the Depression, and it had a powerful and lasting effect on our view of nepotism and family management in general. There was a boom in the economy, and a new era of corporate management and governance was introduced.

Along with that came efficiency, meritocracy, etc. It was the era in which nepotism rules were instituted in big corporations and government. And that was a good thing. It's not my purpose to say that nepotism should be left alone, because what you get then is what you see in Nigeria, India and Brazil. We still need nepotism. It still has a role. The story in my book is the war we've fought since the American Revolution, not to get rid of the family itself but to limit and curtail the influence of family interests in both the public and private sectors.

We did that in the interest of greater efficiency and fairness. However, I argue that in our attempt to get rid of nepotism, we haven't stamped it out but transformed it. What makes it new is that it respects fairness and merit. It's a new nepotism regulated by a deep-seated commitment to those values. Of course, there are and always will be cases of poor judgment by parents and children failing to live up to expectations.

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If you look at the great dynastic families, you can see persistent patterns, and it would behoove family businesses to pay attention to them. It's all common sense stuff: Yes, and often there is a great deal of damage done when family businesses break up. For example, the Pritzkers, a powerful real estate family in Chicago, was a multi-generational business founded by Jewish immigrants 40 or 50 years ago.

Later it was taken over by the sons and turned into a multi-million dollar hotel empire. And the Pritzkers became pillars of Chicago society, contributing huge sums of money to the arts, hospitals, and other philanthropic concerns, including a major architecture prize. But last year, they announced they were dividing up their holdings. There were quarrels about money and they broke up the family trust. There are two things to say about that: First, it seems to be a good thing to some who think having too many wealthy families is dangerous, who think inheriting too much is money is not such a good thing.

We think it's better for people to earn their money, so we're sometimes happy when a wealthy family is broken up But, there's another way to look at it. Now the city of Chicago has lost a great asset because the new broken family will probably give their money on a much smaller scale. Which brings up the issue of family businesses and their relationship to the community. More often than not, there is a strong relationship between family businesses and the community. But it's usually the family business that has an awareness of the importance of them being in the community, while the corporate hierarchies outside the communities don't see it and don't always care.

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Heirs to a local bank know very well how important they are to the community. Which brings us back to the new nepotism. You say the children are returning to their family business roots. There is a swing back the other way. People don't want to work in the corporate environment. They want to be part of a family enterprise and build something to leave for their children.

The family business is perhaps the only way to leave something for your heirs and the best reason to stick around instead of moving to LA. So how are the new nepotistic heirs faring? At FBE, we deal with inner-family struggles that affect the business side. There's nothing wrong with sibling rivalry.

In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History - Adam Bellow - Google Книги

It may give people some comfort to see family dynamics as disruptive, and many think that they force the business to be counterproductive. But the opposite is true. History shows that these are powerful forces and they often supply the motivation and drive that gets people to strive for excellence and give that last ounce. Bush feels he has to finish his father's work in Iraq and prove that he's the legitimate heir, so much the better for the U.


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How do his insights shed light on your work with family businesses? First of all, I have to express my gratitude to Adam for speaking with us. He has written an outstanding book that anyone in a family business should read. There are many insights I've garnered from reading the book but one of the more profound is his concept of the "new nepotism" that now permeates family businesses in America.

I've been advising family businesses for a long time and he's right. Today, second and third generations are not being drafted into the business as much as they are choosing to come in. And, as Adam points out, that creates a very different dynamic for both the family and the business.

In most cases it's better because it eliminates some of the negative stigma that's attached to nepotism. Under the old nepotism paradigm, non-family members felt cheated when the family owners deliberately groomed their children to come in and snatch their jobs away. That flies in the face of our belief in meritocracy as Americans. But when the initiative comes from the children, others in the company can be more sympathetic with the parents' situation.

At the Family Business Institute , we are able to bring an "objectivity" in dealing with areas of concern such as nepotism and the issues around executive competency. Generally, parents want to confirm their offspring's ability to run the business or establish in everyone's eyes that the kids have in fact earned the right to take on the business.

In other words, when they come into the business, are the kids taking charge or taking over? The difference in perception is very important to others in the company. It's hard to know beforehand how a family member will perform once they become a part of the business. What helpful tips do you offer for assimilating children into the company in a way that assures a smooth entry and in a way that doesn't alienate non-family employees? We have some standard recommendations for family businesses.

One is to adopt rules of entry that family members wanting to work in the business must adhere to. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. View all Google Scholar citations for this article. Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

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