Sep 16, 2026 · 51 min · 11 segments
Dr. Marleen Dieleman, Peter Lange Professor of Family Business at IMD Business School, joins R. Adam Smith to explore how authority and fairness actually get tested inside business families. Drawing…
Marleen DielemanGuest
R. Adam SmithHost
IMD is a very, very powerful, wonderful organization and glad to support you all in our small way through the podcast.
So this career, you have watched business families up close and, and you've spent a many years previously in the corporate setting at this holding company, Celine Group, and then also at 17 years at NUS.
So maybe just sort of talk about how you got into the Asian business family enterprise ecosystem.
And what were your thoughts on how, let's say, the Asian family office, family firm market differed from the European model or the North American model? That would be an interesting place to start.
And then sort of give us some of the insights into the differences of the culture and how, let's say, the cultural values and family values inform the way those organizations operate.
And that really got me into the you know, inside these families, I wasn't so interested in the family element at that time.
I was looking at the strategy and I wrote a book on the strategy of the group.
But, you know, that's how I realized that, wow, there is a couple of things that are really different here.
So if you look at many of the families, especially in Southeast Asia, but also in India, they get complex very quickly.
You know, at the moment when we work with families in Southeast Asia, they often have multiple wives, you know, so there are a lot of half brothers and sisters, which makes it very complex.
It was a high growth period throughout Asia and all the emerging markets, in fact.
And they, you know, these super entrepreneurs built up groups, very highly diversified groups with fast growing companies.
And that's another layer of complexity that makes these families here a little bit different from what we typically see in the US and also in Europe.
We could probably do a whole podcast on the Kuritsu Southeast Asian model, which was very much built after the Japanese model recovering from World War II.
And I think that was a very powerful element of the Asian economy, where the Knicks came out and built these holding companies, probably back to the 1950s and 60s, essentially.
Yeah, of course, in Southeast Asia, it really started only in the 70s and onward.
IMD is a very, very powerful, wonderful organization and glad to support you all in our small way through the podcast.
So this career, you have watched business families up close and, and you've spent a many years previously in the corporate setting at this holding company, Celine Group, and then also at 17 years at NUS.
So maybe just sort of talk about how you got into the Asian business family enterprise ecosystem.
And what were your thoughts on how, let's say, the Asian family office, family firm market differed from the European model or the North American model? That would be an interesting place to start.
And then sort of give us some of the insights into the differences of the culture and how, let's say, the cultural values and family values inform the way those organizations operate.
And that really got me into the you know, inside these families, I wasn't so interested in the family element at that time.
I was looking at the strategy and I wrote a book on the strategy of the group.
But, you know, that's how I realized that, wow, there is a couple of things that are really different here.
So if you look at many of the families, especially in Southeast Asia, but also in India, they get complex very quickly.
You know, at the moment when we work with families in Southeast Asia, they often have multiple wives, you know, so there are a lot of half brothers and sisters, which makes it very complex.
It was a high growth period throughout Asia and all the emerging markets, in fact.
And they, you know, these super entrepreneurs built up groups, very highly diversified groups with fast growing companies.
And that's another layer of complexity that makes these families here a little bit different from what we typically see in the US and also in Europe.
We could probably do a whole podcast on the Kuritsu Southeast Asian model, which was very much built after the Japanese model recovering from World War II.
And I think that was a very powerful element of the Asian economy, where the Knicks came out and built these holding companies, probably back to the 1950s and 60s, essentially.
Yeah, of course, in Southeast Asia, it really started only in the 70s and onward.
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