The unprecedented, tumultuous events of the past year have presented family businesses with enormous challenges. And although many have demonstrated significant resilience amid the crisis—the rapidly changing state of the world has served as a wake-up call for family business leaders looking towards the future.
In our 10th PwC Global Family Business Survey, we reveal the current thinking—and future outlook—of 2801 family business leaders across 87 territories. Our findings show that it’s no longer enough to rely on values and legacy to propel the business forward. Tomorrow’s family business requires a new approach for lasting success—one based on accelerated digital transformation, prioritisation of sustainability goals and professional family governance.
"If family businesses want to get to the sweet spot where competence and ethics converge, it requires a change of mindset, a rethinking of their priorities and behaviours and a new definition of legacy."
Peter Englisch
Global Family Business Leader, Partner, PwC Germany
The time to act is now if family businesses want to keep their legacy for future generations. Watch an overview of the key findings from the Family Business Survey 2021.
Strong support to their employees and to the local community in troublesome periods is one of the fundamental principles that came up.
Greek Family Businesses benefited from intensified communication and strong company values during the pandemic crisis. Greek Family businesses appear somewhat more ambitious than their global peers regarding growth prospects in the post-Covid-19 period.
They expect to continue to rely mostly on the traditional sources of financing of operational cashflow and bank lending. They also aim to be more diversified going forward.
Greek Family businesses are coming out of the crisis with priorities similar to their global peers, namely:
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They recognise that there is an opportunity for their company to lead in sustainable business practices and they consider contributing to the society essential. To date, they mostly do it by engaging in traditional social responsibility activities, such as local community support and philanthropy.
Even though Greek Family Businesses recognise the importance of sustainability and the opportunities and challenges that may arise from it, they have not yet incorporated and formalised it into their strategic planning.
The majority of Greek Family Businesses do not have a formally documented and communicated ESG strategy. This may pose a threat to them, as in today’s business environment, more pressure is put on companies to demonstrate their environmental social and corporate governance (ESG) credentials. Failing to demonstrate commitment to sustainability with concrete actions, could result in losing the trust and goodwill and long term even the “license” to operate.
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In Greece, digital, innovation and technology rank high on the priorities list of family businesses, however, the progress has been slow. Even though Greek Family
Businesses recognize that digitalization, innovation and technology are significant, almost a third of them acknowledge that their digital capabilities are not strong enough.
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Greek Family Businesses feel that the levels of trust, transparency and communication are quite high among family members. However, only half of them believe that there is family alignment on the company’s direction.
This gap is further accentuated by the lack of formalised governance policies; even though most Greek Family Businesses are positive about the clarity of roles and strength of leadership within the business, almost 40% of them acknowledge they have no formalised and documented governance policies in place. This is quite low compared with the global survey average, where only 21% of family businesses claimed to have no formalised governance policies.
Family Businesses need to formalise corporate governance. Strong family and company governance policies will be key in the coming years. especially, as the family business owners intend to continue to be involved in the control of their companies and are interested in their longevity and success.
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