Both practitioners and scholars agree that organizations that are ready to cope with crisis should be better able to manage it than organizations which are not prepared. As, due to their company characteristics, family businesses are exposed to additional causes of crisis beyond the usual causes all companies face, preparing for crisis is of specific importance to them. Based on empirical investigations, Pedram Faghfouri shows that non-family businesses are more likely to prepare for crisis when compared to family businesses. The author's findings let further suggest that the existence of a supervisory board has a positive effect on the degree of crisis readiness of a family business. Moreover, in family businesses with supervisory boards, the involvement of family members in the top management team seems to have a negative effect on the degree of crisis readiness.

Autorentext
Pedram Faghfouri has been a doctoral student at Germany's Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU) Otto Beisheim School of Management. Today, he works as an Inhouse Consultant for a German DAX 30 automobile manufacturer.

Inhalt
Turnaround Management State of the Art.- Crisis management in family businesses.- Empirical studies: Methods and sample.- How family members in the TMT and the existence of supervisory boards affect EWSs in family businesses.- Differences in the crisis readiness of family and non-family businesses does a supervisory board matter?.- Summary.