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Family business firms (FBFs) constantly struggle with the challenge of successfully reaching and surviving beyond the third generation. Narrative or storytelling is frequently used in business to transmit knowledge, achieve goals, create and maintain a connection with stakeholders, and achieve sustained growth. Most FBFs consciously or unconsciously use narrative and possess their own discourse, which is unique to every family and family business and which may aid FBFs in achieving continuity. FBFs must have an adequate atmosphere of collaboration and cooperation so that group members can transform acquired tacit knowledge through storytelling into explicit action. FBFs should be prepared to help collaborators and other stakeholders build competencies since tacit knowledge transfer, through narrative, can aid in the solving of problems, enhance innovativeness, and improve strategic decision-making. Therefore, narrative may well aid FBFs in fulfilling their ultimate goal of continuity. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the potential influence of narrative on FBFs’ continuity and prevention of their precipitous expiration. This chapter contributes to previous literature that sheds light on the narrative implications of FBFs, and depicts FBFs’ narratives and the dynamics of their business objectives, as well as touches on the heterogeneous nature of each family business’ storyline. There are various advantages to FBFs’ storytelling; perhaps the most noteworthy is the achievement of sustained business growth and continuity.

Mexico currently faces serious social scarcities and businesses are under pressure. The alternative lies in improving company performance through education. It is important to educate future entrepreneurs and managers within a corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework and expose them to the stakeholder theory. This chapter argues that educating socially responsible management students is the touchstone strategy for addressing the big challenges that twenty first century organizations face. This chapter first defines the CSR concept, relating it to organizations’ role in fulfilling society’s expectations, demands, and requirements. Second, it sets forth why CSR is a strategic tool for management and a moral obligation for companies. Finally, it argues for the importance of including CSR and the stakeholder theory in the curriculum of all management faculties and programs.

This qualitative research articulates the perspective that educational institution directors have on the meaning of management action and the need for training in this area. Significant research findings include the importance of training in three specific aspects: technical knowledge, virtues, and managerial competencies. Study participants emphasized that experience alone is insufficient to run a school, which is an important job not only for educating students, but also for the impact it has on the entire educational community (i.e., managers, administrative and service staff, teachers, and parents).

This chapter introduces the negotiagram as a tool that contributes to the study of the negotiation process. The negotiagram is a construct that facilitates an understanding of interactions between negotiators and their temporal context. Given that the negotiation process can be seen as a system, system dynamics (SD) are used to explore the interactions and complexities in the proposed construct, especially when it comes to circumstances with a high degree of uncertainty, such as an economic crisis or disruptive innovation in the industry. The results suggest that the causal configurations that SD establish lead to non-linear relationships and feedback loops that direct behavior within negotiation, an understanding that further leads stakeholders to a holistic vision and the opportunity to change, manage, and control a negotiation as a system.

Senior managers seek to align managerial endeavors with the organization’s objectives. Traditionally, alignment has focused on monitoring and rewarding the achievement of assigned targets. However, there is evidence to suggest that organizations may also seek to align managerial “values” with those of the organization. These attempts to influence managerial mindsets through management control systems raise non-trivial questions regarding the systems involved, the reasons behind them, and the possible consequences of such attempts. These questions form the basis of this research, and this chapter reports on two case studies of Mexican organizations that claim to have a values-based philosophy. This study contributes to the management literature by presenting empirical evidence related to certain philosophical ideas on the development of human potential and senior managers’ attempts to influence their employees’ will. In detailing the implementation process of two specific value systems, this chapter fills a gap identified in the management control literature.

This chapter addresses the stage at which entrepreneurs figure out that they have reached their level of incompetence (Peter & Hull, 1969) and how they might overcome it. Recommendations are made to aid entrepreneurs realize when this key moment has arrived, as well as to lay out an action plan to help them either become a professional Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or move aside and let a professional CEO run their company. Based on a state of the art review, this chapter identifies the most valued personality traits and skills, as well as leadership styles, for both entrepreneurs and professional CEOs. Those attributes are summarized as ideal job descriptions to help CEOs detect gaps between their current personality profile and the one that best meets company needs at each stage of the business’ lifecycle.

Redefining the word “power” within the realm of corporate social responsibility, with support from individuals, families, and universities, supposes radical social change. Therein, firms aim to exercise leadership and yet are faced with unanswered questions from political, sociological, legal, and economic institutions. As an agent of change the most practical and effective approach for a company is innovation that imitates nature and utilizes a combination of technological and humanistic knowledge. Workers from multiple disciplines form the theoretical and methodological foundations on which the company can empower itself.

This chapter proposes a protocol based on blockchain technology applied to corporate social responsibility (CSR). The first part discusses the characteristics associated with CSR actions and the main difficulties its development faces, such as transparency, security, fault tolerance, among others. Subsequently, the authors describe the characteristics and concepts related to blockchain-based developments to later describe our framework for the control and development of CSR actions based on blockchain. Herein, the authors also describe how to publicly and privately identify the participating elements of CSR and the operations and resources necessary for the implementation and operation of the proposed protocol.