

The Secret to Japan’s Family Firms  - cwan
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/15/the-secret-to-japans-family-firms/

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electromagnetic
IMO it's because western families are orientated around wanting their kids to
go off and do better things than they did. So they pay for them to get a
better education, have more fun, etc. etc.

So how can you want your kid to have things better than you did, but succeed
you in a business you just told them they're better than.

Where I presently work the 2nd owner wants his kid to take over. The only
problem is that the kid doesn't understand the job whatsoever because they
went from nowhere to the top and in construction you just can't do that. You
can't quote jobs if you don't know how much material it takes and square
footage doesn't work because the worker needs to make the job look good too
otherwise you'll be running awfully short of people wanting you to work on
their houses.

I've noticed a lot of Japanese and Chinese families don't have the bizarre
mentality that because they have it much better than their own parents that
their kids should expect to have a life much better than they do. They simply
think "I have a great job that lets me live a happy life, _so I want my kid to
have a great job and a happy life too_ " so dentists will have kids that are
dentists, and you get surprising things like the Kongo Gumi construction firm
lasting 1400+ years and through 40 generations.

Any country can have a great history of long lived family run companies. The
UK has its own history, even France and Germany have quite a list. However
Japan had a history of isolationism and had a similar benefit like the UK in
that an island is very defensible and invasions rarely succeed. This is why
Japan and the UK seem to have the biggest list of long lived family run
companies.

However, the UK has suffered quite a bit of turmoil from itself. Japan's
isolationism seems to have kept it out of too many problems for legitimate
heirs to the throne. The UK had major problems with French and Scottish heirs
to the throne.

Again Japan seemed to get away from the risk of invasion more than the UK did.
Without the Roman and Viking invasions of the UK, there would have been no
difference between the British and the Scottish, meaning there wouldn't have
been centuries of war. IIRC Japans biggest threat was at one point from the
Mongol's, however they were very inexperienced with navies.

Why doesn't the US have a long list of long lived family run companies? Well
the US isn't old, that's why!

