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asian case study Essay

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Sika Nsiah-Poku
INTB 1203
Case 5: Family Business Succession in Asia (Richard Ivey School of Business)
Characteristics of a typical Asian Family firm.
The Wang Group exhibits many characteristics of a typical Asian family firm. Their kinship relationship, succession plan, business continuity and family members hire are all similar. The Wang Group is first and foremost a family-owned business group, which has been active for four generations who carried the business tradition to the next generation. Therefore, the management of the Wang Group is cultured by the family dominance. The internal network of the firm consists of family members who work in the top positions of the company. This is exhibited by the positioning of Wang family …show more content…

Consequently, the changes did not go smoothly. There was chaos in the “inner circle” of the Wang Group. The employees became more dependent on Charles, constantly seeking his opinion and decisions. In the end, Charles became an integral part of the firm’s decision-making processes. As the firm’s organization became “Charles-centric” the employees became more confused and perceived unclear signals about essential parts of the change process, decision-making routines and the structure. Another obstacle was the 2008 global economic crisis, which led to a drop in revenue in trading. Many of their new business such as plantations, shipping, real estate and industrial estates had yet to generate profits. The mining industry was also hit and the executives had to shift their activities to controlling the cash flows and reducing overheads, which had tripled in that year. This was very detrimental for the Wang Group, as the new strategy had increased the cost of structure. Alfred Wang despite his fragile health who was concerned stepped in to cut costs in some programs. Due to this, there was a lot of pressure in the organization as they were still in the middle of an internal reorganization. This led to the departure of the new CEO and most of his team. They argued that the Wang Group were rather inverting to a more centered

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