Family Business on the Couch: A Psychological Perspective

MANFRED F.R. KETS DE VRIES brings a unique perspective to the much-studied subjects of leadership and the dynamics of individual and organizational change. He is a clinical professor of leadership development and holds the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chair of Leadership Development at INSEAD, France & Singapore. He is also the Director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Center. He has held professorships at McGill University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Montreal, and the Harvard Business School, and he has lectured at management institutions around the world. He is a founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations. The Financial Times, Le Capital, Wirtschaftswoche, and The Economist have rated Manfred Kets de Vries among the world’s top fifty thinkers on management and among the world’s most influential people in human resource management.

He is the author, co-author, or editor of more than 24 books and over 250 scientific papers as chapters in books and as articles. His books and articles have been translated into more than 25 languages. He was also the first non-American recipient of the International Leadership Award for “his contributions to the classroom and the board room.”

Kets de Vries is a consultant on organizational design/transformation and strategic human resource management to leading US, Canadian, European, African, Australian and Asian companies. As an educator and consultant he has worked in more than forty countries.

DR. RANDEL S. CARLOCK is the first Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurial Leadership, the founding Director of the Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise and a founding board member of the Global Leadership Centre at INSEAD. Previously he was the first Opus Professor of Family Enterprise and founder of the family business center at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, MN (USA). Carlock has an MA in education and training (1976), an MBA in strategic management (1983), and a Ph.D. (1991), all from the University of Minnesota. His doctoral dissertation explored the role of organization development in managing high growth entrepreneurial firms. He has also completed a post graduate certification in family and marriage therapy at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, University of London (1998) and a certificate in psychodynamic counseling at Birkbeck College, University of London (1999). He was awarded a Certificate in Family Business Advising with Fellow Status (2001) by The Family Firm Institute, Boston, MA (USA).

He is the author of several books, articles, book chapters, videos and case studies. He has over 25 years of experience serving as an executive with a global family business and as CEO and chairman of his own NASDAQ listed corporation. He currently advises global business families and corporations around the world specializing in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

ELIZABETH FLORENT-TREACY, Research Project Manager at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore, She works in the INSEAD Global Leadership Centre, and the Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise. She has conducted research in the following areas: global leadership; global organizations; corporate culture in European and global organizations; American, French and Russian business practices; family business issues (governance, succession, strategy); entrepreneurial leadership; cross-cultural management; women and global leadership; cultural aspects of mergers and acquisitions; transformational leadership; expatriate executives and families; and the psychodynamics of leadership. She holds degrees in Sociology (BA) and Organization Development (MA).

Elizabeth has written authored or co-authored 4 books, 21 articles, working papers and book chapters and 18 case studies on leadership and family business topics.