ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JOHN A. DAVIS is the president of the Owner Managed Business Institute in Santa Barbara. Formerly, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Southern California. Dr. Davis has organized family business executive programs at several leading business schools, and consults to many family businesses worldwide on the topics of working with relatives, strategic and succession planning, and professionalizing the family business.

Dr. Davis’s research interests include family work relationships and family business governance. He is on the editorial board of Family Business Review, contributes to Family Business magazine, and is currently writing a book on the best practices of successful family companies.

KELIN E. GERSICK is a cofounder and senior partner of Lansberg, Gersick and Associates, a consulting and research firm in New Haven, Connecticut, specializing in family enterprise and family philanthropy. He has taught at Harvard and Yale, and is currently a professor of organizational psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology and a senior faculty associate of the Owner Managed Business Institute.

Dr. Gersick’s research and consulting work with family firms focuses on the interplay among family dynamics and business governance and management. He has written on family business, family foundations, parenting, and adult development. He is a former co-editor-in-chief of Family Business Review and a contributor to Family Business magazine.

MARION MC COLLOM HAMPTON is an associate professor of organizational behavior at the Boston University School of Management and a senior faculty associate at the Owner Managed Business Institute. Her research interests include organizational culture, family business, group dynamics, and intergroup relations. Dr. McCollom Hampton has published articles in a variety of journals, and is the coeditor of Groups in Context: A New Perspective on Group Dynamics and the coauthor of The Physician-Manager Alliance.

IVAN LANSBERG is an organizational psychologist in New Haven, Connecticut, and a cofounder and senior partner of Lansberg, Gersick and Associates. He is also a senior faculty associate at the Owner Managed Business Institute. Dr. Lansberg was a member of the organizational psychology faculty at the Yale School of Organization and Management for seven years, and a research fellow at Yale’s Institute for Social and Policy Studies. Prior to his affiliation with Yale, he taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

Dr. Lansberg has lectured at many international family business centers. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Family Business Review and the author of Succession and Continuity in Family Firms, forthcoming from HBS Press. Currently, he writes a column for Family Business magazine and conducts research in such areas as leadership succession and family business continuity.