Naomi Birdthistle

Family Businesses and the Learning Organisation: a Guide to Transforming the Family Business into a Learning Organisation Naomi Birdthistle

At the core of this work is an explanatory research study that seeks to investigate the learning strategies of family businesses in Ireland, in the small and medium-sized enterprise sector (SME), within the framework of the theory of the learning organisation. There is much debate about the benefits of becoming a learning organisation. The benefits of adopting a learning organisation culture are that it ensures that the business is adaptive to changes in the environment, is reactive to developments in markets and is proactive to its customers needs, wants and desires. Family businesses have the same pressures for change as professionally managed firms. This book will be of assistance to owner/managers of family firms, its management and staff; academics and family business consultants as it provides a model for the adaptation of the learning organisation within the family business.