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Dynasties: Fortune and Misfortune in the World's Great Family Businesses by David Landes (view source)
Revision as of 11:19, 8 December 2020
, 11:19, 8 December 2020no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Dynasties: Fortune and Misfortune in the World's Great Family Businesses
|author=David Landes
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Yes
|pages=400
|publisher=Viking
|date=January 2007
|isbn=978-0670885312
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>0670885312</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=0670885312|aznus=<amazonus>0670033383</amazonus>
}}
It's not surprising that family-run companies have dominated the business world for hundreds of years: after all it tends to be the family who are brought in to help in the early stages and then the family to whom it's eventually passed if the business is successful. David Landes uses his background in history and economics to examine some of the dynasties which have dominated banking, automobiles and raw materials and to look at what makes them flourish or fail.
Business dynasties are largely a thing of the past as no one family can hope to produce all the people that a business needs if it is to be successful. Sooner or later outsiders will have to be brought in and the more successful businesses seem to have realised this at an early stage. Landes' book is a fascinating look at what makes the business successful initially and how it survives (or not, in the case of the Barings) in future generations.
I found the writing style a little difficult in places as it varied between quite complex sentence structures which required repeated readings before the sense could be established and statements such as "Peace returned with the end of the war... " This did detract from the pleasure of the book. It's an interesting study of the family dynasty in business but for me , the main value was that it provided a taster of people whom I would like to know more about. You might also enjoy [[Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin]] and [[Banking On It: How I Disrupted an Industry by Anne Boden]].
{{amazontext|amazon=0670885312}} {{waterstonestextamazonUStext|waterstonesamazon=54173690670033383}}
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