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Hello. My name is Jan Bebbington. I'm the Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business.

As a group of researchers, as well as practitioners, we're interested in how social and environmental sustainability can be mainstreamed into purposeful business strategy.

So this leads me to be very interested in the idea of resilience in family businesses. The resilience aspect is something that we have some of the primary expertise in, and there's basically two ways that people think of resilience. A very simple way is that after a shock, a system returns to its previous state.

A more sophisticated way is that systems are always subject to shocks. So businesses are always having to adapt and respond to things in their environment. And as a result, resilience is about still managing to carry on and deliver what they need to deliver, even though there are those shocks and and pressures on them.

Of course, in the current time, we're really worried that some of those pressures and shocks have become stronger and more intense than they have before, whether it be climate change or biodiversity, but also the demands that are placed on businesses to address inequalities, for example. And so resilience in business is really about how organisations navigate that ever-changing and complex environment.

I won't say too much more about family business, because someone else will. But family businesses essentially are a really interesting place in which to understand those dynamics.

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My name is Allan Discua Cruz, and I am currently the Director of the Centre for Family Business at Lancaster University.

The Centre for Family Business specialises in understanding family businesses, not only locally, but also internationally.

We're extremely interested to understand what makes family businesses not only survive but really become successful anywhere. One of the key interests we have is understanding what happens to family firms when they face different crises or issues or they face problems over time.

The reason for that is that we have actually found that they develop some abilities to really come back and not only react to the issues or the problems, but at the same time develop ways and strategies to overcome obstacles that last throughout time.

And that's why we are interested in topics such as resilience because we are sure that businesses around the world that are controlled and owned by families face issues all the time.

Some of these issues might come not only from the environment or for the places where they are located, but also from the family system and sometimes when these two items combine, it demands that they develop a resilient way to respond not only for their family, but for the business and the community. And that is why we are interested in these topics today.

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I'm Valerie Stead and I'm the Director of the Academy for Gender, Work and Leadership. Our research has a social justice agenda we're interested in how we can tackle gender inequalities to develop fairer and more equitable organisations and a social sustainability agenda. We want to know how tackling gender inequalities helps organisations, communities and society in general to thrive.

We are interested in resilience because we know that inclusive businesses that promote and engage actively with gender equality tend to be more innovative and open to change and therefore they're more likely to be resilient. That is they're more likely to be able to anticipate, respond to and learn from adversity and crises.

If we are to develop resilient organisations, therefore, we really need to understand what are the blockers and enablers to inclusivity in our value systems, in our behaviours, in our practices and in our leadership and management processes and structures.

Family businesses are a really valuable context in which to develop that understanding, not least of all because they are a major contributor to the wealth and well-being of many economies. But also because of family businesses' unique characteristics and they can place a spotlight on the role that gender plays in business.

Also, family businesses often have to contend with gendered ways of working, such as succession practices that involve passing the business on from generation to generation, often through the male line, from father to son.

Managing these complex gendered practices, these interrelationships and gender dynamics are very challenging, and extremely so in tough times.

Learning about the role that gender plays and how family businesses operate and organise can therefore provide valuable and important insights and lessons for building resilience in family businesses that also have relevance for organisations and business more widely.

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I'm Ben Harrison. I'm Director of the Work Foundation, and our interest really in the concept of resilience in the context of family business is really drawn from our core purpose, which is to produce applied research to support everyone across the UK to access secure, well-paid and good quality employment.

Now, family businesses in the UK account for roughly 50% of all private sector employment and employ around 14 million people. So just by virtue of the the scale of the sector, they will be at the heart of driving up the quality of employment across the country.

But I also think when we're thinking about resilience, very often that can lead people to think about being able to withstand change or remain the same despite the world changing around you.

Whereas, in reality, I think the route to sustainability and to true resilience is being able to adapt to change over the long term and be able to recognise where trends are taking place and how you need to adapt and innovate in order to remain relevant and to thrive in the future.

And clearly, family businesses, given their the way that they're constituted, and the way that they think about longevity, um we'll be approaching those sorts of challenges in in a particular way.

And we're really interested to understand more about that, particularly at a time when we're coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, where we know there are longer term trends around the transition to net zero, the digitisation of the economy, uh the rise of automation. We're really keen to get under the skin of how our family business is thinking about those changes and challenges, how are they planning for the future and how are they planning to equip their workforces as well to be able to navigate those changes over the coming decade.

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[Sara Brennan] Hi, I'm Sarah Brennan. I'm Positive Business Director for Pentland Brands, that's a family-owned business.

I think the themes that have emerged across the two days have been the interconnectedness between looking at issues around the environment, such as the biosphere and what we're doing from a sustainability lens, but also what we need to do from a from a people lens as well. So how that you can't just focus on one without without looking at the other.

It was really interesting some of the conversations that came out when looking at gender and and the role of gender in in family business and, and how that then plays out in, in the wider biosphere as well.

[Helen Tregidga] Hi, my name is Professor Helen Tregidga, and I'm one of the Co-directors of the Centre for Research into Sustainability which is a cross-disciplinary or interdisciplinary research centre at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Well, the two days have really been an open conversation amongst a really diverse group of researchers and practitioners drawing on family business and resilience, and I think by its very nature has just led to a large number of different areas.

For me some of the key were around challenges, and that started because of the opening presentation around resilience in the biosphere. So challenges being one, and the other being scale, and the need to work across multiple scales and and across multiple areas.

[Sarah Brennan] The distinctive aspects that's emerged for me is the need to take a intersectional approach to this. I think if we don't do, look at the interconnectedness and the intended and unintended consequences, we can end up where we operate in silos, and I think this is where today has been fantastic is having the different academic disciplines come together and look at it from a multi-disciplinary lens, but also inviting family business and some examples from family business along so that we can we can all come together to helpfully perforate some of those silos that we're perhaps currently working in.

[Helen Tregidga] So some of the things that have emerged from the conversations that I think are quite, for me, were a bit distinctive were the idea of the importance of place. And, and while i think that that is something that we often consider we've really had some quite big conversations about the importance of place, and that's important socially, community and also for the environment.

The other one is around collaboratio,n and the need to collaborate. And I think the openness of the conversations, the willingness of people to to engage has meant that the openness and collaboration has really has, has been really important.

[Sarah Brennan] I think the themes that have emerged across the two days have been the interconnectedness between looking at issues around the environment, such as the biosphere and what we're doing from a sustainability lens, but also what we need to do from a from a people lens as well so how that you can't just focus on one without without looking at the other. It was really interesting some of the conversations that came out to when looking at gender and and the role of gender in in family business and and how that then plays out in in the wider biosphere as well.

[Helen Tregidga] I know a lot more about family business than, than I did before the seminar and also the similarities of some of the discussions that is being had in family business that are had ther areas of responsible business or social enterprises.

[Sarah Brennan] I think the next steps are to keep these conversations going to, to provide that the platform to have the different disciplines in academia and the different disciplines in business come together, because I think it's through that collaboration that we can really get into some of the issues that we're facing as a, as, as individuals, but also as businesses and as institutes as we're trying to tackle some of the big challenges that are going on around the world currently. So let's keep this conversation going, would be my advice as next steps.

[Helen Tregidga] well I think the next steps in the conversation will be, would be to continue with, with what we've discussed in the last few days, but also perhaps bring in different groups as well. So I think one of the benefits has been the diversity of participants, and so other community groups, other groups that were perhaps not represented in today's disc, or the last two days' discussio,n would be it would be great to see those opened up to more and more.

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