Dr. Jane Glover and Prof. Kiran Trehan from WE-LEAD have been awarded a grant from the Institute for Family Business Research Foundation (IFBRF).  The project involves working collaboratively with the IFBRF on a set research agenda.  The research explores the community impact of family business and addresses three important questions:

  1. How do family firms engage with the communities they belong to?
  2. What impact do family businesses have on the communities they belong to?
  3. How do family firms contribute to the vitality, well-being, prosperity, and sustainability of the communities they belong to?

Taking an engaged scholarship approach the project combines interviews, small survey and observations with family firms and their stakeholders as well as individuals in the communities which they are involved with.  The project will develop evidence-based guidance for family firms on the different ways of engaging with their community, enhancing and evaluating it as well as how to report this back to their wider stakeholders from family firms in different regional locations across England.  The IFBRF project will run from June 2019 – November 2019.

This project builds on a small Birmingham Business School Grant awarded to Dr. Jane Glover and Prof. Kiran Trehan to explore the ways in which family firms both public and private disseminate their corporate governance practices through social media and the internet, this include information provided on their websites and corporate social responsibility reports.