The fourth transnational partner meeting of the FAME project was organised in Cracow hosted by the Polish partner, Cracow University of Economics on 26-27 April 2018.

Multiplier Event: Family Businesses as an Engine of Growth

May 2017 

Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University was delighted to host a multiplier event discussing family business research, policy and practice raising awareness and understanding of the FAME Project.

Students, practitioners and academics attended the multiplier event to promote the FAME project and family business research in Leeds.   The event was well attended, informative and engaging. Professor Leo-Paul Dana from Montpelier Business School and Dr Claire Seaman from Queen Margaret’s University made interesting observations on the nature and state of family business research. Two representatives from family business based in Yorkshire (A.W. Hainsworth of Leeds, and Street Food Chef of Sheffield) offered practice based real-world insights that served to stimulate a lively question and answer session.  The ability to adapt to changing market conditions and to have products and services that can feed business growth were just some of the many topics discussed.  Further information is available:

http://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/events/faculty-events/family-businesses-as-an-engine-of-growth/

October and November 2018

Budapest Business School organised the multiplier events of the FAME project both for Student and Family Businesses in October and November 2018.

Student workshops on 6 and 12 October in the framework of the Enterprise Development and the Finance/Accountancy Master courses – for 2nd year students. The project coordinator and the module leaders introduced the e-learning materials and all project results, and the students tested the e-learning modules and completed evaluation questionnaires and giving feedback for the developer teams.

BBS organised the first Family Business (FB) workshop together with the National Association of Family Businesses on 18 October 2018 at the monthly Club Day event of association. BBS organised the second FB workshop in the framework of a bigger event (titled: “Internationalization and Sustainability” – disseminating 3 parallel development programmes of BBS) on 21 November 2018. The project representatives introduced the project, its objectives, the implementation process and the achieved results and asked feedback from the participants.

Two other events of the Budapest Business School was also connected to the FAME project.

One was the ERASMUS Days 2018. BBS Joined the European ERASMUS Days 2018 with workshops focusing on ERASMUS Mobility and Strategic Partnership co-operations on 12-13 October, and the other was a large national Family Business conference and workshop organised by the Budapest LAB (Excellence Centre on Entrepreneurship of the Budapest Business School) on 28-29 November.

1 October 2018

A validation of FAME training materials for FB representatives was conducted within a final conference of FAME project (a multiplier event). The conference "Contemporary Challenges for Family Firms" was organized jointly with Polish-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce in Kraków, at CUE campus (Rakowicka 27) on 1st October 2018.

The reason for merging those 2 events was a scarce availability of FB representatives: we have experienced this problem already during the INSIST project.

The conference and FB workshop has gathered 31 participants from family firms. The organization of the event was as follows: first, the project manager (Dr Jan Brzozowski) has presented the basic challenges for FB in Poland, showing the importance and relevance of FAME project. Then dr Hanna Kelm has presented the basic materials from FAME project: printed textbooks have been circulated in the audience, and the e-learning materials have been displayed on the screen and commented. After this short (ca. 1 hour) presentation, the workshops followed.

There were 2 workshops: one more practical with Tomasz Żybula, director of PL-UA Chamber of Commerce (Legal changes and new trends on Polish market: challenges to FB // Zmiany prawne i nowe trendy na rynku polskim: wyzwania dla firm rodzinnych) and the second using FAME teaching materials from Module Transitions Issues (Is it worth to formalize the structure of family firm? //Czy warto formalizować strukturę firmy rodzinnej?). The second workshop included a short introduction and training using role-playing activities (exercise taken from Transition Issues on conflict-solving within FB).

After those 2 workshops the participants were finally asked to fill the questionnaires to evaluate the teaching materials. The questionnaires were prepared in Polish language, and all the lectures & workshops were also prepared in polish, as many of the participants (FB representatives) did not know English. The grading was very favourable (see the results of the evaluation available online), and the main negative comments were about the lack of availability of materials in Polish language. It is worth to note that albeit this comment is important, the basic construction of the project did not enable us to prepare teaching materials in Polish, as the partners did not have funds for the national translations.

As Budapest Business School has an excellent connection with the National Association of Family Businesses in Hungary (CSVOE i.e. one of the most important advocacy organizations of family businesses in Hungary, it was within the framework of the signed Cooperation Agreement that the representatives of BBS were invited twice to the monthly Club Day event of the Association. In this way BBS had a great opportunity to inform members of the association about all development actions in progress connecting to Family Businesses. On average there were 50-60 participants at the Club Day event of CSVOE, which meant a large audience for the presentations about the FAME project.

At the first event, Ms Krisztina Németh (member of the Transition Module development team) and László Varga (project coordinator) introduced the results of the closed INSIST project (antecedent project of FAME) and as well as objectives, expected results and impacts of the FAME project. The participants were delighted about the continuation of the international projects of BBS in the field of Family Business development – involving the members of the association to the pilot actions of the results (workshops, pilot trainings).

At the second time, Mr László Radácsi PhD, director of Budapest LAB (Entrepreneurship Centre of BBS) reported on the establishment of Budapest LAB and its first important actions, the start of a wide-scale Family Business research in Hungary, in which the members of CSVOE had had an important role. Besides the first results of FAME, other international project of BBS were mentioned to the participants. Synergies between the research programme of the LAB and the FAME project have mutually reinforcing effects on each other.

BBS and the National Association of Family Businesses agreed that all information about the development actions of BBS are important and useful for the membership of CSVOE, and the representatives of BBS are warmly welcome to the Club Days in 2018 as well.