Resilience and family business groups in unstable economies

This chapter focuses on resilience and family business groups in uncertain environments. Family business groups can operate everywhere yet studies have largely overlooked the influence that unstable, high risk and uncertain environments, characterized by weak institutions, social unrest, volatility within the economy and political turmoil have on the resilience of family business groups. Many family businesses survive, and some thrive, in such contexts where individual and non-family businesses have not. In this chapter, we investigate how (whether) family businesses demonstrate resilience in uncertain environments, the role of portfolio entrepreneurship in this process and how the development of business groups form an integral part of the family response to an adverse business environment.