I was kind of skeptical about posting this on the blog because it's not academic but I thought why not! I'm watching this show called Empire on Fox and it's amazing and what's even better it's about a family business! The show is about a man called Dwight Walker (Lucious Lyon) who was a former drug drug dealer turned hip hop mogul of an CEO of an entertainment company called Empire entertainment. He recently discovers he has ALS and only three years to live so he obviously needs to groom a successor. He's also trying to get his company to go public before he dies and is overcome by obstacles by competitors and those who don't want him to reach that level of success.
He has three sons:
He has three sons:
- Andre Lyon: he's the former CFO of Empire entertainment and a Wharton graduate and he's power hungry and competing for a spot as CEO of the company. He suffers from bi-polar disorder and is married to his college sweet heart. His father seems to have a problem with his disease and the fact that he's married a white woman. He also sees himself as an outcast because he's not musically talented like his other two brothers and therefore can't relate to the rest of his family
- Jamal Lyon: he's the middle child and seen as the 'black sheep' of the family. He's seen as a musical genius to the outside world and is obviously fighting for a spot as the successor. But there's one problem, he's gay, and his father is homophobic
- Hakeem Lyon: the youngest and the favourite son. He's just as talented as his older brother musically but he's irresponsible and has no value for money which is worrisome for the father. Despite this his father gives him whatever he wants and agrees with everything he says.
- Cookie Lyon: she's the ex-wife of Lucious Lyon and has just got released from a 17 year prison sentence and is coming back to claim half the company she invested in before she went to prison. She also wants to help the middle son own the company before her husband passes.
I've posted a link below about the show. It's quite amusing. Enjoy!
Maheen, I watch this show as well and it really helps to inform me about the changing nature within a family business. Putting this show in the context of our module, it links with what we have learnt for the past couple of weeks as it highlights that a family business cannot be successful if there is not a constant effort to maintain peace between the three dimensions of the family business. In my opinion, I do not believe that there can be a permanent solution that can be applied to the family, the ownership and the business. Thus, the solutions proposed when attempting to resolve family business issues should be more flexible than stagnant, to a some extent. Just like in the show, the father (Lucious Lyon) has had to adapt his strategy time and time again just to try and satisfy the different members of his family. However, this does not always guarantee success as Lucious cannot seem to satisfy more than one of his children at a time.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI feel anything Lucious does is in his own interest. For example he favours Hakeem (and even though I think he's an amazing singer) but I feel all 3 sons should be able to run Empire together (especially Andre since he's serving as the company's CFO). I think there's some Leadership issues going on in regards to Lucious? He keeps changing his strategies and he favours his most irresponsible son. He seems to follow an authoritative leadership pattern and I feel he definitely needs to change that for the company to be successful, I feel he's so power hungry himself that he doesn't really want anyone else to really run his company. I think he also needs to stop letting his personal vendettas against his other two sons get in the way of how to . He also needs to get a consulting company to come and perhaps observe Empire's state of affairs in order to see how the shares could possibly contributed based on the son's individual participations. BUT he did make Jamal his official successor for the time being, what is that all about?
ReplyDelete