Follett Family Enterprise Learning
Welcome to Follett Family Enterprise Learning
Here you will find engaging and interactive, real-world cases ideal for family enterprise courses and management courses that include family enterprise topics. The cases and associated materials are targeted for undergraduate and MBA students and use the case method of learning and are based on actual problems that leaders in family enterprises—all members of Loyola’ Family Business Center—have faced. Case questions ask students to determine a course of action and have learning outcomes related to aspects of family enterprises learning: the nexus of business, ownership and management, and the family.
Mission
Follett Family Enterprise Learning at Loyola University Chicago, Quinlan School of Business, Family Business Center is funded by a grant from members of the Follett Family. In 2022, after 150 years solely in the hands of the Follett family, the family sold Follett Corporation, its higher education, K-12 library software and learning materials and public library software businesses.
To continue the legacy of the company’s founder, D.W. Follett, and to continue the family’s legacy at the forefront of education and technology, members of the family donated the funds for Follett Family Enterprise Learning. FFEL provides excellent course content at the cutting edge of technology to allow for wider access to education about family enterprise, allowing the Follett family to continue its leadership role in delivering transformational learning materials.
What we offer
Learning Resources
Storytelling
FFEL offers cases and teaching notes supported by storytelling assets hosted at this site. Videos of interviews of key family members in the cases allow learners to delve into the complexities of making decisions in a family business. Cases cover topics essential to family enterprises, including:
- Governance and Leadership: Best practices for effective governance, leadership development, and succession planning.
- Family Dynamics: Strategies for managing family relationships, conflict resolution, and fostering a positive family culture.
- Business Strategy: Insights on strategic planning, innovation, and growth tailored to the unique needs of family businesses.
- Financial Management: Guidance on financial planning, wealth management, and sustaining financial health across generations.
Learning Outcomes
Learning outcomes of FFEL content are specific to the concerns of family enterprises.
- Succession Planning: Understand how successful family enterprises handle leadership transitions and prepare the next generation.
- Conflict Resolution: Evaluate strategies used by family businesses to navigate internal conflicts and maintain harmony.
- Growth and Innovation: Apply course concepts to analyzing examples of how family enterprises innovate and grow while staying true to their values and legacy.
- Governance Models: Differentiate approaches to governance that have helped family businesses sustain and flourish.
- Sustainability: Analyze how family leaders made decisions for the long-term that contribute to the wellbeing of the business, the family, the community, and the ecology in which the family does business.
- Discernment: Learn how family members overcame challenges, implemented best practices, and achieved long-term success. Students reflect on the ways that they can apply these tactics to their family enterprise contexts.
Britten Follett on Women and Successor Legitimacy
Britten Follett, CEO of Follett Content Solutions and 5th Generation Follett family member offers viewers the opportunity to learn how women successors establish legitimacy while maintaining legacy in family business. This video is of interest to women planning a career in their family's enterprise, women switching careers and business sectors to work for their family's enterprise, boards managing succession, and the wider family enterprise sector concerned with developing successful and resilient families and enterprises.
Britten brings to life a key takeaway from family enterprise education, research, and consulting: family sets family enterprise apart from other enterprises. Thank you, Britten, for generously sharing your commitment to family enterprise.
Katherine Sredl
Lead Scholar, Follett and Litzsinger Family Enterprise Learning at Loyola
Reflection Questions
Consider reading these Ignatian Pedagogy inspired reflection questions after viewing the video to make your family enterprise learning experience transformational.
- What, if any, assumptions, thoughts, or feelings did you have about young women taking leadership roles in family business?
- What do you think or feel about this issue after watching the video?
- What about the video might have caused this change?
- What one thing can you do after watching this video? Some ideas could be: start a conversation with my parents/daughter/board about the future, check out Loyola's Family Business Center programs, ask AI to summarize "women succession in family enterprise"
Meet our Lead Scholar
Katherine Sredl
Dr. Sredl's work has significantly impacted gender studies within marketing by theorizing and demonstrating how macro-level changes such as globalization and digitization impact and are impacted by consumers in their everyday life through everyday rituals. She uses her Croatian and American identities to integrate, challenge, and embrace data and theory in her ethnographic research. Her three most cited publications ask how portrayals of gender roles in media impacts consumption, how women respond to globalization in daily rituals, and how consumers in post-conflict markets respond to peace treaties in daily life (Dayton Accord). As an instructor, her greatest accomplishment is sending lifelong learners into marketing jobs with the knowledge, skills, and emotional intelligence to succeed in the industry and light the world on fire. Writing cases for the Follett Fellowship has given Sredl, who grew up in a family business, an opportunity to unite that experience with her academic and consulting background in multimedia storytelling.
Faculty BioHere you will find engaging and interactive, real-world cases ideal for family enterprise courses and management courses that include family enterprise topics. The cases and associated materials are targeted for undergraduate and MBA students and use the case method of learning and are based on actual problems that leaders in family enterprises—all members of Loyola’ Family Business Center—have faced. Case questions ask students to determine a course of action and have learning outcomes related to aspects of family enterprises learning: the nexus of business, ownership and management, and the family.
Mission
Follett Family Enterprise Learning at Loyola University Chicago, Quinlan School of Business, Family Business Center is funded by a grant from members of the Follett Family. In 2022, after 150 years solely in the hands of the Follett family, the family sold Follett Corporation, its higher education, K-12 library software and learning materials and public library software businesses.
To continue the legacy of the company’s founder, D.W. Follett, and to continue the family’s legacy at the forefront of education and technology, members of the family donated the funds for Follett Family Enterprise Learning. FFEL provides excellent course content at the cutting edge of technology to allow for wider access to education about family enterprise, allowing the Follett family to continue its leadership role in delivering transformational learning materials.