family-economics

I read this book in one afternoon. It is a relatively quick and easy read. David Owen does a good job of supplying advice and a lesson in money management with a little humor. My son is 6 years old and I just started giving him an allowance so he can buy things and stop pestering me. It turns out that this is exactly what Mr. Owen recommends in his book.

This book was enjoyable and informative; I recommend it to anyone with young children.

I got a few books on how to teach kids money from the local library and settled on David Owen's book. Owen used his real life experience with his own children to get his messages acrossed. Some of the approached Owen used are really "out-of-the-box". He also offerred the lessons he learned from his experiments.

Owen's philosophy is sound, his approaches are sensible, and this book is easy to read and often funny. Highly recommmended.

David Owen's book should be must reading for all parents with children under age 12. In the first part of the book he describes the success he has had with his own children in establishing a "bank" for them that is both understandable and lucrative. Later he gives excellent advice on providing allowances for youngsters and what they might do with some of the cash including the risks of getting caught up in bubbles nearly as scary as the great internet dot.bomb or dot.con fiasco of 2000: namely, beanie babies. Valuable lessons for children.
Also, the simple language used to describe stocks and bonds could be very useful for young, inquiring minds. Almost surprisingly at the end he segues into the benefits of reading aloud for impressionable minds, and again makes good solid sense. In sum a great book for parents to own and read and even for grandparents to buy for them.

I'd recommend this to anyone who is seriously thinking about starting a home day-care. It has lots of useful info, and the last part of the book is dedicated to forms you'll need to start your business. I did think some of the activities were unrealistic to do with any child under the age of about four, but other than that it's a very good book.

A must have for anyone thinking about starting a home day care business. It definatly should be reprinted.

This is a great book for anyone starting a home day-care business. The tips in it are very helpful, the reading is enjoyable, and the craft ideas and day-care forms are a must have for anyone in the business.

This book opened my eyes about the challenges of being in a family business. I'm involved in a family business right now, and there are things I definitely have to start talking about with family members. Many of the issues in the book have never been discussed in our business and it makes me want to start asking questions and getting answers. The stories in it are very believable (sp?) and I really enjoyed reading it - along with getting excellent information about the pitfalls of family business.

At last, here is a book that holds up a mirror to the reader. No one can read these cases without relating to and empathizing with these families and their stories: how they each grappled with the common dilemmas and challenges that must be faced when you own a family business. The most important theme runs like an artery through every case: healthy, adult family relationships and a strong business lead to successful family businesses generation after generation. 

Barbara Murray, PhD   Editor in Chief -- Families In Business Magazine of the Family Business Network

Fowler's book is an excellent resource for business owning families. Having worked in several family businesses and on the boards of several family companies, I am acutely aware of the potential for heartbreak. A rare few worked. The opposite is the general case. After a family/business conflict, it is not uncommon for family members to never talk again for the rest of their lives. Some family business consultants, like Dean Fowler, have found better ways. His book describes through case studies how successful family businesses thrive from generation to generation.

ich bin Mohamed 33. Jahre Alt, ich habe eine schune Frau und zwei Kinder Mohab und basant.......1,001

This book is highly recommend for dealing with issues faced with in Corporate America. I've read it at least five times within the past 10 years. It works. You never stop learning !!!

This book is an excellelt guide on how to apply the principles of Judo to your daily interpersonal experiences. It teaches mental skills to handle any situation, especially those you wished you handled better.

Articulate and literate. The author frequently includes the opinion of the professionals in the field. This book is written from his experience within a very successful company. So some of the advice won't apply to owner's whose business/estate isn't worth more than [a] million or so.
By 'professionals in the field' I mean that there are a few professors turned consultant/author who have written texts on family business. They all tend to quote each other, and this author does the same. But he has some valuable insights of his own.
If your business is worth many millions, check out his column versus pyramid idea of ownership succession. Or if you're ready to pass your company, of any size, along to the next generation, this discusses the options.

These days, it seems harder than ever to predict the future of the family business. Killer companies, rollouts and sweet buyout offers have dampened the enthusiasm of many first-generation business owners for passing their businesses on to their sons and daughters.

Indeed, when presented a "too good to be true" offer from a potential buyer, patriarchs and matriarchs are inclined to say "Why not?" They can take the cash, make sure that their retirement years will be comfortable, and have some money left over to pass on to the kids.

A compelling argument, but it's not what family businesses are about, says Marshall Paisner, founder and now chairman of the ScrubaDub Auto Wash Centers, a chain of 10 car washes in metropolitan Boston. Paisner believes that family businesses exist to sustain families financially and spiritually. Yes, they must be innovative, customer-focused and, ultimately, profitable. And yes, sometimes selling out is the best option. But Paisner believes that it's the best option far less often than people think.

Paisner launched ScrubaDub in 1965. Through innovation, a participative management style, fun and a slavish devotion to the customer, the company has grown steadily since then. No doubt much of that growth is due to Paisner's enthusiasm about customer service. He's even managed to make car washes fun, offering coupons and red-carpet service for regular customers. (See the company's website at www.scrubadub.com for information on the Car Care Club, gift ideas and the Scrubadub Difference.)

He sees the family business as a gift, not a burden. Indeed, this is the fundamental thesis of his book. But getting kids to see the business as a privilege instead of a right doesn't happen overnight. It starts at the dinner table, when the kids are young.

"In too many families, parents send signals to their children that running a family business is a stressful and unfulfilling endeavor," says Paisner. "Wishing to spare their children unnecessary worry about problems they can't understand, parents unwittingly turn their children against the business by banishing business talk from the dinner table, closing off opportunities to share both disappointments and triumphs."

Paisner himself prepared his kids for a ScrubaDub future by having them to work in the car wash during summers, then encouraging them to work outside the business after graduation before joining the company. Once the kids were involved in the business, he instituted a participative style of management that allowed all family members to gradually take on responsibilities and learn how to deal with conflict.

He drew up a "family plan" to articulate the family's overall intentions for the business. Owners can use such plans to articulate their conception of the business "as a trust for which each generation acts as a temporary guardian, preserving it to pass on to later generations," he believes.

Paisner firmly believes that most of the reasons people give for selling are based on "inadequate information, poor planning, or what I consider to be an insufficient appreciation for the benefits of keeping a family business in the family."

Still, he does allow that sometimes - though not often - selling the family business is indeed the best option. Perhaps the best reason, he believes, is when the business is about to get knocked off by new technology.

If it comes down to a sale, owners shouldn't make a move without enlisting the aid of a smart investment banker to help them value their business and elicit the best offers possible. Then, once the sale is made, every provision should be made to distribute the money equitably. Distinguishes family business culture from general business culture, because it makes clear that the business exists, essentially, for extrabusiness reasons. It doesn't exist solely to make money and to be successful, like most business; it exists to take care of a family."

Maybe there's more to life than the golf course after all.

The dreary statistics are familiar to all of us who work with family businesses: family businesses make up 90% of the 15 million operations in the United States. Only one-third make it to the second generation. And only 10% make to the third.

Given such depressing numbers, isn't it only logical that owners can easily be convinced by industry consolidators to turn their ownership into cash?

Marshall Paisner takes strong objection to this view.

Accountants can only consider market value when making pricing decisions. Family business owners need to take market value into account, but they also need to consider family values. In the long run, family value is more important. The goal of a family business is to live a desired lifestyle and give the next generation the opportunity to do the same thing.

And if you don't like Paisner's "soft" view of business, he argues that the return on a successful family business is almost always greater than the after-tax return of an estate produced by the sale of such a business.

Much of what Paisner says has been said elsewhere. This book is worth reading because Paisner is the Chairman of Scrub-A-Dub Auto Wash Centers, Inc., one of the world's largest car-wash chains. Founded in 1965, he has successful transitioned the business to his two sons. And we can personally attest that Scrub-A-Dub is one of the best consumer products marketing companies we have ever seen! And we have seen many.

SUSTAINING THE FAMILY BUSINESS is a "How I Did It" book plus an integration of published research plus an integration with other family businesses around the country.

Topics include: Creating a Family Culture, Managing Family Conflict, Developing Tax Strategies, Developing Estate Strategies, When Selling Makes Sense, Navigating a Successful Sale.

For those of who serve on Boards of family businesses, Paisner speaks positively about the use of true outsiders to serve on his Board of Advisors, how he selected them, and how he compensated them.

He has a section on what actions to take when spouses' perceive that their mates are being unfairly treated. Such perceptions can poison both the business atmosphere and the family atmosphere. Paisner has a cogent prescription for what those steps ought to be.

Carnoy's analysis of labor data, along with astute personal insights, are his tools for describing a changing world of work, family, and community. He examines tchnology-based workplace changes, as well as trends concerning globalization and the impact of women's role in the labor force and changing family structures. The "cloth" of Carnoy's vision is woven from many emerging trends which affect the way we define community. He concludes that societies might benefit from a shift in power from mega-nationals to innovative local governments, requiring active commitment on the part of citizens, a a redirection from job-centeredness to knowledge-centeredness.

Martin Carnoy did a great job to organize his own field works and general trends into a seamless fabric. The broad features of new economy is captured by a deft hand with timely insertion of lively facts. Whenever I meet materials on this kind of subject, I cannot but be assured that social sciences are not science but a derivative of literature. They tend to be super-optimistic or ultra-pessimistic. But equipped with well founded conception, Carnoy takes a realistic stance. He shows what should be called social sciences
The author raises the question: How to sustain current economic expansion? On the face of cut-throat global competition, the workplace could not but be transformed to attain flexibility. With it, firms compete in the new environment. But flexibility indicates disaggregating workers from the social institutions that reproduce human capital and social capital. The author calls for public intervention to establish reintegrating institutions for two reasons:
1. Traditional nuclear family and local community have been stressed with mounting pressures from labor market. Those institutions have been the very place where human capital and social capital are reproduced. Human capital and social capital are indispensable to sustain the economic growth. New economy is more vulnerable to such undermining the very infra, society, where the economy is embedded.
2. What is the most distinct in the new economy is knowledge. Knowledge, or human capital, should be reproduced. Now it¡¯s relegated to the individual¡¯s hand. This has devastating effects on social integration. Without some measures, the access to knowledge, skills, and information divide workforce into the dual labor market where winner and loser reproduce themselves for good.

This book explains the current transformation of employment and work, and the consequences for families and communities. It shows, with an impressive documentation, that flexibility is the norm. The new economy is productive because workers move around and change jobs and activities. But this flexibility may be socially unsustainable, unless we strengthen the family, the community, and the schools. What I really like about this book is that it is a great piece of academic research, yet it is a down to earth, policy oriented book that could help us and our politicians to make the new economy socially sustainable. Required reading for economic and social sciences in colleges. And easy, interesting reading for everybody wanting to understand our new world. Manuel Castells, Berkeley, California.

Stewart D. Friedman and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus conducted extensive research with 861 alumni of the business schools at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia. Their research yielded revealing results about the struggle of professionals to manage work and family commitments. However, Friedman and Greenhaus present these results in such overwhelming statistical detail that the average reader is in danger of being swamped. This is especially the case when the data proves principals that most people already grasp through common sense and experience. That said, we ... recognize that the authors have done working Joes and Janes a great service by aggregating numbers to back up the notion that it's getting tougher to balance family and career. As such, this is an important book for anyone in a position to set workplace policy.

This book contributes to our understanding of the complicated relationship between work and family life. Based on an extensive survey of over 800 business school alumni, the book takes the reader on a thoughtful journey looking at the issues facing both working parents and the organizations employing them. Organized around six major themes, two particularly stood out for me. First, the authors make the point that work and family can be allies. When there is support for non-work lives, individuals experience greater well-being in the form of less role conflict and greater self-esteem. Another critical theme is that children are major stakeholders at work. Although others have made this point, Friedman and Greenhaus do a stellar job of describing the behavioral and psychological effects on children of having a mother or father deeply involved in work. Written in a clear and engaging style, this book is valuable to both human resource practitioners and scholars.

The dilemma that working parents all face as they succeed in their careers is how to manage their emerging professional responsibilities with their nurturing responsibilities for children. When family demands escalate, typically women scale back, or opt out of, professional opportunities freeing men to climb the proverbial career ladder. An authoritative new book, Work and Family -- Allies or Enemies by authors Stewart Friedman and Jeffrey Greenhaus, makes the case that it is possible for both working parents to pursue a career and assume full parental responsibilities - and be happy doing it - if both are willing to work cooperatively.

Based upon a pioneering study of 800 business professionals, Work and Family offers startling insights and lessons into how men and women, along with their employers, are dealing with the challenges of integrating parental and professional responsibilities. The book is formed around six key themes: 1) We can have (much of) it all, but it's especially difficult for working mothers; 2) Work and family can be allies; 3) Time is not the major problem; 4) Authority on the job is essential for work-family integration; 5) Women may be better adapted for jobs of the future; and 6) Kids are the unseen stakeholders at work. Friedman and Greenhaus weave these themes through the book in ways that puncture myths (keeping private and professional lives separate) and illuminate new understandings (acceptance of employers to new work processes to complement work-family integration).

The authors offer three principles for integrating work and life. One, clarify what's important. Parents need to be clear with one another as well as with their employers about what they want to achieve in their lives. Two, recognize and support the whole person. Private and professional lives overlap; it is important that individuals integrate the best parts of themselves into all parts of their lives. Three, continually experiment with how goals are achieved. Blending work and family is an ongoing learning process that needs continuous evaluation to meet changing needs.

Work and Family is as much for parents as it is for employers. The war for talent is continuous and escalating. As authors Friedman and Greenhaus demonstrate in their research, those employers who strive to meet employees' needs for an integrated work and life will be rewarded with more loyal and dedicated employees who are happier and more productive. They end up creating a win/win situation for employees as well as their shareholders.

Work and Family is an important work deserving of inclusion in the lexicon of literature concerned with our changing workplace. Parents will find prescriptions for finding answers in their day to day work and life choices. Employers will find lessons that they can apply to their work environment. And researchers will find a fundamental study upon which to carve new understandings of work and life in our culture.

Catherine Beecher's famous sister, Harriet, may have sparked some of the ideas presented, but did not actually contribute to the work of writing this book. Catherine was a childless, unmarried, middle-class woman, whose great tragedy was that her fiance was lost at sea before they were married.

She was an intellectual who lived in a time when women were severely constrained by domestic drudgery. Catherine Beecher strived to ennoble women's traditional role through education:

"It is the aim of this volume to elevate both the honor and the remuneration of all employments that sustain the many difficult and varied duties of the family state, and thus to render each department of woman's profession as much desired and respected as are the most honored professions of men."

There is a great deal of moralizing in this book, about lifestyle, Christian charity, care of children and servants, and so forth. In this, Catharine Beecher was a product of her century. Yet some of the observations are surprisingly astute, even for today's readers. For instance, there is a humorous passage about cooking with butter that will have you smiling about rancid butter in every dish. In so many ways, the modern homemaker has less to worry about. We can purchase conveniences that were undreamt of 130 years ago.

This is a self-consciously "American" perspective on keeping a middle class house. Yet the French are looked to as having perfected cooking and many other things, and this sort of repetitious praise can grate on the American reader. Beecher was addressing the American woman during the Civil War and post-Abolition time period, during a great influx of European immigrants and when the population was actively expanding westward. She had it in mind to influence the young woman of a certain generation, and in many ways, her ideas were both more advanced and more orderly than what had gone before.

This book is a *must read* for students of Women's History as it pertains to women in the home. If you are interested in the 19th century lifestyle, you will find many domestic details here.

The Beecher sisters and Mark Twain were comfortable neighbors in 1869, living the good life on Hartford's elm lined streets. Mark wrote humorously about world travel or of his adopted home town, what was to become the "Insurance Capital of the World" while Harriet Beecher Stowe could claim authorship of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Catherine Beecher wrote a very practical "how to" book, the American Woman's Home, with a little help from her famous sister. The life they lived had not yet been saturated with the influence of petroleum....that would take some time to get up to speed.

A well written and factual book. Something to keep with you the rest of your life. Some very basic and foundational principles that kids should know. I know I overlooked them until I read John's book.

This book is written for young adults, so it's a quick read. However I'm embarassed to say that I learned information I should have known or learned years ago myself- and I'm WAY past being a young adult.

For example I never understood why infatuation could be such an exciting yet painful experience until learning the reason; infatuation is a completely selfish emotion. I also wish some of my friends would read this book so they'd truly understand WHY their husbands/boyfriends "look" at other women, etc.

Lately it seems like I've known lots of people in relationship/financial difficulty (and these are adults!) I am so tempted to just hand them the book, but thus far I just recite the advice.

I wish I had read a book like this years ago. It would have saved me lots of heartache.

I have read Mr. Zikos' book and found it helpful in many aspects of my everyday life. I have followed his advice concerning the news media and find my life is more tranquil and my habits less harried than before. I also find his investment advice to be sound. The author's perspective has been a help to me in other areas as well . His book is a heartfelt explanation of what Mr. Zikos has learned in a life of world travel and study. It is directed toward his young son, whom he clearly loves. That love comes through on every page and in every word. The author is genuine in his attitude and his words are valuable to anyone of any age. A book that is not only intellectually stimulating but also morally and spiritually inspiring. A book that is needed in today's challenging times.

I really enjoyed the content of this book.

This is an outstanding book for couples who want to succeed in their marriage and financial affairs. Not too many books out there that deal with relationship and finance, many couples today deal with the financial issues presented to them but never see the other issues in their relationships that also affect their financial situation. This is a must read book!!!!!

I was surprised to find this book not only an accessible read but also a highly informative volume. There are very few books on the market that deal with financial issues in relationships and how to deal with them. Strange, since money issues are one of the top problems people encounter in their relationships. This book is focused on turning finances into a solvable problem rather than an interminable argument in a relationship.

The book is set up in four parts. The first part walks you through all of the things that can affect a relationship: from hidden issues, to expectations, to gender differences. The second presents ideas and techniques to use in discussing difficult or emotional issues. The third part is the real financial section. It takes you step by step through the basics of financial planning: saving, spending, buying a house, investing, insurance, estate planning, taxes... The fourth part brings relationship tips and financial guidance together, showing you how this can form the groundwork of a strong and lasting partnership.

Most people do not receive an education in financial planning let alone how to work with that in a relationship. This book provides an easy way to deal with those issues. Not only does it provide you with the skills to discuss these matters, but it also gives you a good, basic understanding of how to deal with finances. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone in a relationship - you will get something out of this.