Subject category:
Human Resource Management / Organisational Behaviour
Published by:
Harvard Business Publishing
Version: 11 July 1989
Revision date: 26-Aug-2020
Length: 8 pages
Data source: Field research
Abstract
A young woman manager in a Swiss family firm finds that her role as a managing director becomes bitterly unpleasant once her older brother decides to leave an engineering career and join the family business. That is what the father, who was head of the business had been hoping and waiting for. He begins to belittle and ridicule the daughter. The board of directors also favors a male successor. The daughter writes a letter of resignation just before taking a trip abroad. While she is overseas, both parents write letters asking her to reconsider.
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Abstract
A young woman manager in a Swiss family firm finds that her role as a managing director becomes bitterly unpleasant once her older brother decides to leave an engineering career and join the family business. That is what the father, who was head of the business had been hoping and waiting for. He begins to belittle and ridicule the daughter. The board of directors also favors a male successor. The daughter writes a letter of resignation just before taking a trip abroad. While she is overseas, both parents write letters asking her to reconsider.