Customer Reviews

Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses

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Contrary to the other reviewers, I thought this was a worthwhile and interesting read. The subject matter is compelling given that, as Landes points out, many of the great companies of the world start out as family run and were handed down within the family for at least two more generations.

Landes rather convincingly shows that while long term adaptation requires shifting to professional management, the family-run model holds unique advantages that explains the critical early success of the enterprise. Loyalty, passion for the business, esprit de corps, willingness to re-invest in the business, and long-term thinking are all characteristics of the family-run business. Professional management tend to think in more short-sighted ways and the shift from the family as well as the alientation brought on by the big money paid professional managers can seriously erode morale.

All of which raises the issue of why we tolerate the compensation structures of professional managers. It would seem preferable to restructure financial incentives to reward long-term thinking. Perhaps we should think about lower salaries that don't completely alienate the rest of the workforce as well as stock options or deferred compensation tied to long-term corporate performance.

Landes is thoughtful and entertaining and has wonderful anecdotes. The portrayals of Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller are all very striking and amusing.

I recommend it.

You know the names: Rothschild, Rockefeller, Ford, Toyota, Guggenheim. Yet, economists rarely analyze the impact of family enterprises. Bestselling author and scholar David S. Landes corrects this imbalance with his study of 11 enduring, influential dynasties. He defines a dynasty as a successful business held within one family's control for at least three generations. Family companies, even immense ones, often follow a predictable pattern: First, an ambitious, clever, hard-working patriarch, and, perhaps, his children, found a big, profitable business. Then, the following generations spend the accumulated wealth instead of adding to it. Yet, there are fascinating anomalies within this model - from amazing philanthropy to bad apples. The dramas behind family ties that unravel (or knit more strongly) in the face of big money make each chapter read like an absorbing novel. Sometimes Landes' attempt to track every branch of a family tree can leave the reader out on a limb, yet getAbstract warmly recommends this entertaining work to anyone with an interest in history, economics or family dynamics.

David Landes has written one - not only in my opinion, I believe - of the "must read" book of all times: ''The wealth and poverty of Nations'' . Based on this, You can tell the amount of expectation on every single line he writes, and "Dynasties" unfortunately does not help at all. The book is too long, too superficial, and some times it was really hard to keep on reading. If you are looking for something to chat on cocktails and/or with your colleagues at the cafeteria - there are some interesting stuf in here. In the other hand, if you are looking for some analysis on the familiar enterprises and their evolution (organizational, structural, etc.) - search somewhere else.

I had a hard time finishing this book. I kept thinking the book would get more interesting but nothing kept my attention. Part two on automobiles was probably the most interesting part but I still nearly put the book away to read others. I was not impressed with the author's style of writing. He seems to have a fascination with one or two words sentences which became very annoying. I would not recommend this book.

I bought David Landes' "Dynasties" expecting alot more than I finally got from reading what might best be described as potted histories of some of the most illustrious business families in the world. With the exception of Toyota, the others were not surprisingly either American or European. The highlights and most memorable stories were about the rise (and fall ?) of the business empires of Rothschild (merchant banking), Ford (automobile), Toyota (automobile) and Rockefeller (resources). The others were either too cursorily handled or laden with anecdotally tantalizing bits that otherwise lacked substance or more weighty research that may reasonably be expected of a book such as this. Inevitably, most of these stories would start promisingly but start to diffuse midway before sliding all too quickly to their unsatisfactory end.

In writing these chapters, Landes seem to think that the genesis of these business empires is all that would intrigue us readers. Why do I believe that ? Because more often than not in these stories, he would race through the last 50 years suggesting that this must be the most ordinary of times when nothing could be further from the truth. Surely, the dynamics and changes in global business trends in the past two decades must make this among the most tumultuous of times and how these empires have coped or not coped with these external forces surely deserve more page space than they are given. For this reason, the stories feel incomplete, which is a shame because "Dynasties" could have been a far better book than what we've got.

I have mixed feelings about this book which, aside from being poorly written, edited and proofread, presents interesting information in a less than interesting way. It isn't easy to discern the author's personal opinions from fact and there is no consistent flow in how the subjects are treated. The book would be easier to read if the author had followed a consistent methodology to present the historical relevance and purpose for the families he chose and had discussed each one in the same way. Instead, the subjects are treated haphazardly and the addition of personal opinion and trivia makes what could be an interesting discourse rather boring.

'Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes in the World's Great Family Businesses' did not measure up to my expectations and was not consistently interesting. By omitting some of the world's most fascinating dynasties, David Landes has missed an opportunity to entertain his readers. For example, the famous Oppenheimer dynasty surely merits a mention in a work of this nature? Ernest Oppenheimer established the Anglo American Corporation in 1917 and also gained control of the De Beers Consolidated Mines Company, which was originally founded by Cecil Rhodes in 1888. De Beers subsequently became an international cartel under Ernest Oppenheimer. His diamond empire continued to expand under the control of his son, Harry Frederick Oppenheimer - a leading opponent of the South African apartheid system - and grandson, Nicky Oppenheimer, the present chairman of the company. The background to the struggle to gain control of the diamond monopoly in Kimberley would have made interesting reading.

I feel that this book, despite its interesting theme, would have benefited from a better selection of material.

This book details 13 dynastic businesses. It is divided into three sections, which cover; banking, automobiles, and raw materials (oil, mining, refining and metals production). Each section is divided into chapters covering a different dynasty or in the case of French automobile manufactures, three dynasties. British, European, American and one Japanese company are profiled.

Professor Landes defines a dynasty as "... a succession of at least three generations of a family business, marked by continuity of identity and interest." The book consists mostly of short biographies of these dynasties, with some common themes, namely; the advantages and disadvantages of a dynastic business compared to a publicly owned company, and the extent to which the families have remained in control of the businesses versus having to turn control over to outside experts. The chief advantages of a dynastic business are in the passion that successors may bring to the management of the business, the support that the various heirs may give to one another, and the prominence of a family name that can connote quality and stability. When this passion, support, and good family name exist, the dynasty can thrive, but when absent the business gets into trouble. The story of almost all of the dynasties that are discussed is one of an eventual loss of family control, either through a lack of interest or poor family management. Outsiders bring in talents that the family does not possess, but they also tend to lack the passion for the company as an entity, as opposed to just being a vehicle that can enrich the outside manager. Professor Landes also makes the case that dynastic firms can be a very good choice for developing countries if they are committed to their country as well as to the business. In contrast, multinational firms are generally interested in repatriating profits and not in building up the local economy, unless that can also reap profits that can be returned to the parent company.

The writing is interesting and entertaining and I liked this book, but with some reservations. I had the feeling, supported by the concluding chapter that refers to a few events that are not covered in the book, that the initial draft of the book was longer, but that the book was reduced to a more saleable size. This view was also supported by the omission of a few important and widely known events that are not mentioned in the book. For instance, there is no mention of the aborted Edsel division of the Ford motor company. The attempt, in the late 1950's, to honor Henry Ford's son and the father of the then current chairman Henry Ford II, was a dismal failure for a variety of reasons. The surprising thing is that it is not mentioned in the book, in spite of its intimate involvement with the Ford dynasty. Another surprising omission is that of the breakup of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company.

I recommend this book to those interested in biography, business and economic history.

It seems that Mr. Landes tried a bit too hard to write a book rather then an article. If a good editor worked on this it would have been an intersting article for a magazine such as Smithsonian. Although I bought the book because of seeing if there was any historical perspective, I found that it lacked detail that would have made me connect or say wow.