On March 4, 2022, Gibb Dyer gave a talk titled “Why Studying Family Business is Important for Management Scholars: The Family Capital Approach.” The presentation focused on the importance of family business in the world’s economy and how strengthening an owning-family’s “family capital” can lead to positive outcomes for both the family and the business. He also explained how various disciplines in academia (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics) can be used in the study of family businesses. Implications for both family business theory and practice were discussed along with a brief history of the field of family business and key issues in the field that have caught the attention of both academics and practitioners.
W. Gibb Dyer (PhD, MIT) is the O. Leslie and Dorothy Stone Professor of Entrepreneurship and the Academic Director of the Ballard Center for Social Impact at BYU Marriott. He has also been a visiting professor at IESE in Barcelona, Spain and a visiting scholar at the University of Bath in the UK. Dr. Dyer is a recognized authority on team building, family business and entrepreneurship and has been quoted in publications such as Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Fast Company. In 2007 he was given the faculty teaching award from Brigham Young University’s division of continuing education, and in 2008 was given the outstanding faculty award from the Marriott School at BYU. He has been cited as one of the top 10 researchers in the world in the field of family business and his research has been cited 15873 times (Google Scholar). His books on teams, family business and entrepreneurship have been translated into Korean, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish.