Center for Family Business

Setting up a business is tricky enough. Doing it as a family is even
dicier. Just what are the constraints and challenges that come with
running a family-controlled enterprise?

The answer to that question - and many more - can be found at fambiz.com,
a leading Internet resource for family-business executives and owners.

fambiz.com is a non-profit organisation hosted by the Northeastern
University's Center for Family Business, a top American educational
institution. What the site administrators aim to do is to eventually link
more than 100 university-based centres for family business around the
world together so as to share as much knowledge as possible.

The site's overall simple design belies its generous store of information.
At last count, more than 300 family-business articles include
inter-generational issues, estate planning, sibling rivalry, and managing
non-family managers and employees.

Its current feature is: "Which comes first, the family or the business?",
discussing how a family business can collapse if members do not express
their expectations openly and a crisis ensues.