annotation 2

What is the Purpose of Passing the Firm Down to The Next-Generation While There is a Low Success Rate
source: Wang Luzhuang, Fang Jie, Tan Xiaoyan: An Empirical Study on the Inheritor Training of Modern Chinese Family Business (Science Research Management, 2008, Vol. 29)
   
     After choosing the successors, the owner’s children, they start to plan or do whatever they can to help their children to become competent, decisive, sociable and so on. There are many way the owners use to cultivate their children to a apt successors. Giving pressure on grade is the most often way to urge them since they are young. The parents hope that they can have a better education background to convince people that they are the proper one to take over the company, not just because they are lucky enough to be the owners’ children. And arranging the successor to the management position or bottom position is the sometimes essential procession of succession. One of the purposes may be to be familiar with the way the firm operates at the same time to know other employees well. The last one mentioned is also a vital way the parents train their children, that is bringing them to different formal occasions, to know their parents’ business friends and to learn the manners.

     Having these preparations, you may think they may be good enough to manage the firms. However, one statistics show that the success rate of passing is decreasing with the generations. There are 40% could last to the second generation and 13% to the third generation. And only 3% of firms still live well under the forth generation’s management. It is reasonable that a company edging down to closing up with years. Then there is no reason to insist on passing down the firm to the next generation. As I mentioned before, the offspring are not necessary appreciate the faith the entrepreneurs hold, and on the other hand, doing so could restrict the children’s freedom to choose or find what they really want to do by deciding for them at the very first. 

annotation1(revised)Why Business Owners Tend to Choose Their Children as successors

Why Business Owners Tend to Choose Their Children as successors

     Source: 戴志強：《家庭企業”子承父業”繼任模式分析》(學習與實踐2009年第五期)

     In this essay, the author lists some reasons that make business owners to pass down their firms to their next-generation. The most important factor must be the concept of family that deeply rooted in people’s mind. There is a long history of agriculture in China, and after more than two thousand years’ feudal rule, now that the concept could be a significant core of Chinese people’s behavior.

     The first reason the author gave was that it matches human’s instinct of pursuing the continuity of life. And creating own business and passing down them to children could be a way to attain it. Children’s life are thought of as the continuity of the parents’. Therefore, those self-established entrepreneur who sweat blood all their life are not willing to just give their accomplishments away to other people than their later generations as their continuity of life and to keep their own family flourishing.

     For the second reason, the author thought that the social trust is generally low in our society. It’s hard for the entrepreneurs to rely on outsiders because the connection between the firm and the outside successors is based weakly on law, the system and the contract, etc. And on the other hand, now the influence of the traditional concept of Confucianism and karma in religion become weaker gradually. Then it couldn’t affect people that much before whenever they behave in this time and age, causing businessman to be afraid of being harmed by them, the outsiders. All that mentioned above do dampen down the social trust in some way.

     Then the author also provides some explanations for why children take over the firms. The successors may witness the process of the firms’ being stronger year by year since they were young. Therefore it becomes easy for them to take the company with emotion as what they should work and fight for. They run the business as if that’s their obligation. For another reason, the pressure from clan is crucial too. Once they do not take the responsibilities that everyone thought they should, then through the family network, they will soon be “notorious” for being lazy, not having a good work ethic and so on in the clan.

     But in my view, what if one does not do a good job in what one successes? One statistic says that 64.8% entrepreneurs still choose their children as successors even if they are devoid of competence or not willing to take over the firms. (中國私營企業發展報告)I think that will lose the meaning of passing down the flame. When they fail to manage the business well, it would be impossible to be as a continuity of life to their parents. Since if one has the particular faith that is worth to last, it is not necessary to be limited inside family members. What If the faith could be used by anyone who appreciates it and apply it more smartly?    

Why Business Owners Tend to Choose Their Children as successors

Why Business Owners Tend to Choose Their Children as successors

     Source: 戴志強：《家庭企業”子承父業”繼任模式分析》(學習與實踐2009年第五期)

     In this essay, the author lists some reasons that make business owners to pass down their firms to their next-generation. The most important factor must be the concept of family that deeply rooted in people’s mind. There is a long history of agriculture in China, and after more than two thousand years’ feudal rule, now that the concept could be a significant core of Chinese people’s behavior.

     

     The first reason the author gave was that it matches human’s instinct of pursuing the continuity of life. And creating own business and passing down them to children could be a way to attain it. Confucius once said,” your physical person with its hair and skin are received from your parents…….” (身體髮膚，受之父母) Children’s life are thought of as the continuity of the parents’. Therefore, those self-established entrepreneur who sweat blood all their life are not willing to just give their accomplishments away to other people than their later generations as their continuity of life and to keep their own family flourishing.

     

     For the second reason, the author thought that the social trust is generally low in our society. It’s hard for the entrepreneurs to rely on outsiders because the connection between the firm and the outside successors is based weakly on law, the system and the contract, etc, and sometimes the morality. And on the other hand, now the influence of the traditional concept of Chung, Hsiao, Jen, Yi (忠孝仁義) and karma in religion become weaker gradually. All that mentioned above do dampen down the social trust in some way.

     

     Then the author also provides some explanations for why children take over the firms. The successors may witness the process of the firms’ being stronger year by year since they were young. Therefore it becomes easy for them to take the company with emotion as what they should work and fight for. They run the business as if that’s their obligation. For another reason, the pressure from clan is crucial too. Once they do not take the responsibilities that everyone thought they should, then through the family network, they will soon be “notorious” for being lazy, not having a good work ethic and so on in the clan.

    

     But in my view, what if one does not do a good job in what one successes? One statistic says that 64.8% entrepreneurs still choose their children as successors even if they are devoid of competence or not willing to take over the firms. (中國私營企業發展報告)I think that will lose the meaning of passing down the flame. When they fail to manage the business well, it would be impossible to be as a continuity of life to their parents. Since if one has the particular spirit that is worth to last, it is not necessary to be limited inside family members. What If the spirit could be used by anyone who appreciates it and apply it more smartly?     

Family Business Succession The Lack of Career Choices for the next-generation

Family Business Succession: The Lack of Career Choices for the next-generation

     Among many values, the concept of family has always been on the top of Chinese societies. It is normal for Chinese people to put much importance on family, and fight and pursue for the felicity. Therefore, it is a natural idea for Chinese people to pass down the ownership of the business to the next generation of one’s own family with the hope of keeping their family flourishing. However, when it comes to succession, it would be a significant works. How to transmit the faith one keeps to the children, and how to raise them to be competent to take over the business and other many problems that need to be tackled to meet the expectation during their growing time. And since the mass expectation and pressure coming from parents or relatives, the child who is chose to success the firm has little freedom to decide his own road to walk.

     
     Taking my own family as example, about twenty years ago, my parents scratched from nothing and established their own factory producing golf poles for their passion for playing golf. With the environment becoming harder and harder, they transferred the factory to China while the one in Taiwan was kept but those Taiwanese employee were replaced by migrant workers, but in the end was still shut down because of financial problem.

    
      When I was in elementary school, once I lied in bed without falling asleep, I heard my mother was talking seriously to my order brother about his future because he was indulging in online game that time and failed the exam to high school. There was a word from my mother that transfixed me:” Did you know how much weight your father puts on you? The name of the firm ‘Wei Li’ in China was set especially for you!” (One of the name of my brother’s is “理”, and the firm name means “for 理”, though they are different words.) Then, I heard they were weeping. That was the first time for my brother to know the existence of the responsibility he has to bear.

    
      Since then, my brother would go to China when in vacation between semesters to learn everything he has to from every details like how the pole were made to the way of socializing with other business men properly. He then majored in Machanism in the university, and without going for the degree of Master because my parents think that it’s more important to get practical experience, he joined the army, and now stays in China with my father, preparing to take over the business.

     
     Before my brother went to China, I once asked him that is it really his will and does he really wants to go there and success the firm? “I am much luckier than others, my classmates. I haven’t to experience the difficult time to find a good job in environment like now.” He answered calmly.

     
     For my brother, he seems to accept the fact that his life was set before he could consider carefully, because it seems to be a good enough arrangement, comparing to his peer. However, it is not fair to the children at the very first. The pressure to success their family business narrows their thinking of different possibilities of their own life. While once they make decisions that do not meet the family expectation, the fight is usually inevitable. 

Animal’s Multiple Identity: Companions, Slaves or…?

Animal’s Multiple Identity: Companions, Slaves or…?

     In the history of human beings, animals have a rather intimate relationship with people. Dogs, for instance, they started to become human’s companion since about twelve thousands years ago. Their traits of living in a community and submitting to a leader, etc that descended from wolves give it a chance for having cooperation with people. Dogs watched over the land from being disturbed or helped going hunting for men, and got foods in return. In that way, dogs and human worked together in various fields from then on, such as in guiding the blind, being a therapy companion and so on.
     So does the cattle, though not quite the same, in the time of agriculture, farmers cultivated the land, growing crops with cattle’s great labor. During the process, the companionship was built up and formed a special bond between each other. As a result, the cattle were considered as subject-of-a-life, being sentient precisely, and treated like one of a family member of the farmers’. In the society of Taiwan, those who, especially the farmers, experienced the time when the mechanical equipment had not yet been dominant in agriculture have seemed consuming beef as a taboo, for ethical reasons.

     After the industrialization, however, the labor of animal, replaced by mechanism, was no longer that needed, and caused the bond between human and some of the animals to become weaker and weaker. In addition, in this time and age, living in a concrete jungle and having a life style of modernization, few people get the chances to have the experience of getting alone with the nature and the animals. Now the bond with animals is established from children’s literature initiatively, then we make the deeper connection with animals by visiting zoos, where animals are categorized properly.

     We have a major change of the way we treat animals comparing to the previous time. We now take most of animals as commodity that can be produced massively, treated immorally and transacted at will. Laying hens were caved in hundreds and thousands of piled battery cages, without the space for spreading their wings, showered by the faeces coming from upper cages every single day, and, through their life time, never have the opportunity to touch the ground by their own feet, to rest in roosters, or to do whatever they should by nature. And end up being delivered to slaughterhouses.          

     Considering there are countless animals suffering and are lack of attention while countless animals such as cats and dogs are being protected, it could be quite dubious that why we will have these extremely opposite reactions toward them relatively. All as nature beings, all once shared companionship with human, but now have different identities that tagged by human’s will, either companions or slaves.