International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research

Not another study of great leaders: Entrepreneurial leadership in a mid-sized family

firm for its further growth and development
Wilson Ng, Richard Thorpe,
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Entrepreneurial
Not another study of great leaders leadership
Entrepreneurial leadership in a mid-sized
family firm for its further growth and
development
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457
Wilson Ng
Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, London, UK, and
Richard Thorpe
Leeds University Business School, Leeds, UK

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and process of leadership in a mid-sized,
family-controlled bank in Singapore in order to understand how it grew and developed under family
control.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on distributed leadership as a theoretical
framework in exploring how a major corporate acquisition was conceived and undertaken to advance
the bank’s growth and development. Data were obtained through structured interviews with
managers based on a three-part discussion protocol following a pre-interview questionnaire.
Findings – An “extended” system of leadership involving different levels of managers is developed
that successfully completed the acquisition and produced significant growth from the combined
businesses.
Research limitations/implications – Based on a single case, the paper does not claim that the
observed phenomena are typical of mid-sized family-controlled businesses (FCBs). However, for
scholars, the paper suggests how studying leadership practice in such FCBs may produce insights that
challenge the popular view of an all-powerful family leader by substituting a more nuanced
perspective of a collaborative leadership system that facilitates entrepreneurial activity down the firm.
Practical implications – For managers, the study suggests how deeply developed collaboration
among different levels of managers may produce competitive advantage for FCBs that seek further
growth and development.
Social implications – It is suggested how further research of the growth processes of mid-sized
FCBs may maximize the value of entrepreneurial opportunities for their “extended” family of
stakeholders, specifically for their customers with whom FCBs typically enjoy close relations.
Originality/value – The paper fills an empirical gap in the literature on competitive, mid-sized FCBs
by articulating a process in which a unique competency is developed for their ongoing survival as a
family-controlled enterprise.
Keywords Family firms, Leadership, Entrepreneurialism, Entrepreneurs, Competitive advantage,
Business development
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
International Journal of
Despite popular interest in family-controlled businesses (FCBs)[1], little is known about Entrepreneurial Behaviour &
why and how leadership[2] matters in this form of organization. Notably, little is Research
Vol. 16 No. 5, 2010
known about how leadership practice[3] in FCBs may help them survive, despite pp. 457-476
scholarly calls for case-based research of how entrepreneurial leadership may help q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1355-2554
FCBs grow and survive under family control[4] (Habbershon, 2006; Karra et al., 2006; DOI 10.1108/13552551011071896
 IJEBR Le Breton-Miller and Miller, 2006). This paper seeks to fill the empirical gap on
16,5 leadership and entrepreneurial activity in FCBs by suggesting how leadership practice
has helped a mid-sized[5] FCB to grow into a large, publicly quoted firm (PLC) while
remaining family-controlled.
Two research questions were developed to address this gap. First, what is the
nature of leadership in competitive, mid-sized FCBs, and second, how might leadership
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458 in these FCBs contribute to their growth and development under family control? We
suggest that addressing both questions requires a deep understanding of how
leadership practice in such firms may produce outcomes intended by their key actors
(Spillane, 2006; Spillane et al., 2007).
The paper makes two contributions to scholarly understanding of successful,
mid-sized FCBs. First, it describes and analyzes an “extended” system of leadership in
Sinobank[6], a commercial bank in Singapore that has recently grown from a mid-sized
enterprise into a world-ranked PLC under family control. By an “extended” system of
leadership, we mean a developed method of directing and controlling Sinobank that
was exercised by family directors and various non-family managers of the bank who
collaborated for this purpose. Leadership of Sinobank’s process of growth and
development was therefore “extended” down the management hierarchy. This research
on Sinobank’s “extended” leadership is important because most studies of FCBs have
portrayed their leadership in terms of the entrepreneurial behavior of a single family
leader, while non-family managers are usually regarded as mere supporters of a
family-led agenda (Redding, 1990/1993; Gomez-Mejia et al., 2003). By contrast, this
study of how non-family managers were able to take a leading role in the development
of a competitive, mid-sized FCB suggests that an entrepreneurial system of leadership
was already established in the FCB.
The paper’s focus on mid-sized FCBs is motivated by the paucity of research on this
important form of organization. FCB studies have dwelt on small and very large FCBs
while largely ignoring mid-sized but still FCBs (Zahra et al., 2000; Sharma, 2004). This
implies that FCBs face significant problems in growing beyond small size, specifically
in industries requiring specialist expertise (Carney and Gedajlovic, 2003). Yet, the
available literature on mid-sized FCBs suggests that they constitute a distinct form of
organization with a propensity for further growth and development based on their
record of initial growth (Zahra et al., 2000). It is not in fact unusual to see FCBs in
competitive businesses that have grown and developed into large organizations under
family control (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2005b; Le Breton-Miller and Miller, 2006).
Commercial banking seems a topical example of such a business, while Singapore’s
open, well-regulated economy offers a credible basis for extending the paper’s findings
to other constituencies.
The paper’s second contribution follows from its description of Sinobank’s system
of leadership in suggesting how leadership practice in mid-sized FCBs may also
become an important entrepreneurial tool in sustaining this form of organization under
family control (Sorenson, 2000; Steier, 2001). Here, the paper adopts a perspective of
distributed leadership as a guiding framework for exploring leadership practice as it
draws the focus of research in FCBs away from individual leaders towards a more
nuanced interest in how leadership is practised in those organizations for their survival
(Spillane, 2006, p. 89). By distributed leadership, we mean a process of directing and
controlling the firm that involves co-performance of important actions by a number of
 parties who participate in the process (Spillane, 2006; Spillane et al., 2007). In Sinobank, Entrepreneurial
participating parties were managers at several management levels who were groomed leadership
to play a leading role in the bank. In this paper, we describe the nature of this system in
the way that senior, non-family managers in Sinobank distributed leadership of a
major corporate acquisition to low-ranked branch managers (“line managers”) as a
means of integrating the acquired firm with the existing business and producing
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growth from the combined businesses. 459

This paper has six further sections. Section 2 reviews theories of leadership and
entrepreneurship relevant to the research. Section 3 explains how data on Sinobank
were obtained and analyzed. Section 4 presents a critical incident[7] of FCB leadership
within an “extended” leadership perspective. Section 5 discusses the practice of
Sinobank’s leadership system. The paper concludes by suggesting how our “extended”
leadership perspective contributes to scholarly and management understanding of
mid-sized FCBs, specifically in the way that leadership practice may become a unique
source of their competitive advantage.

2. Literature review
2.1 Leadership in family firms
Substantial literature on leadership exists in relation to small- and mid-sized
enterprises (SMEs) (Cope, 2003; Zhang et al., 2006), with the most popular form of SME
being the family business. Here, agency theory has greatly influenced scholarly views
of leadership in FCBs where it is suggested that they are capable of achieving
impressive growth under a well-connected family leader-entrepreneur (Fama and
Jensen, 2003). The perceived strengths of “family entrepreneurship” (Heck et al., 2008)
may be encapsulated in the notion of the family leader’s “personalism” (Carney, 2005).
“Personalism” is an unbounded authority to influence the FCB that family
shareholders believe they hold because of their ownership of the business (Carney,
2005). Many small FCBs are highly efficient organizations where the family leader has
used his personal influence to engage a “kinship network” (Karra et al., 2006, p. 870) of
family and friends to jumpstart the business. While kinfolk share a natural interest in
the FCB, the family leader can also “extend” the FCB’s influence to potentially useful,
non-family contacts. Such contacts will normally belong to the same social network as
the leader (Redding, 1990/1993), who will have accumulated considerable favor from
network members (Wong, 1998).
However, it is suggested that as FCBs develop, problems normally arise that hinder
their further development, typically following a conflict of interest among family
shareholders (Yeung, 2000). Such shareholders may be distantly related (Handler,
1994) and non blood-related (Ng and De Cock, 2002) parties with different interests
from those of a dominant family group[8]. Conflicts among shareholders produce
inertia in the FCB’s development (Kellermanns and Eddleston, 2004), while the
controlling family’s failure to recruit talented managers may presage the firm’s decline
(Carney and Gedajlovic, 2003).
This perspective of FCB leadership has been applied in explaining the rise and
decline of FCBs in Southeast Asia. Although their entrepreneurial founders exploited
the disorganized conditions of Southeast Asia following the Second World War, it is
suggested that FCBs did not adapt to subsequent business conditions because of their
rigid, founder-centered system of management (Redding, 1990/1993; Chan, 1996;
 IJEBR Carney and Gedajlovic, 2003). Typically in Southeast Asian FCBs, subsequent
16,5 generations of “altruistic” (Schulze et al., 2003) family members prioritized the welfare
of family members over those of the firm, and the market values of most FCBs have
declined over time as they have become less competitive (Claessens et al., 2000).

2.2 Leadership in entrepreneur-led businesses

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460 Similarly, the entrepreneurship literature dwells on the leader’s role played by a
venture’s founder-owner in launching a successful venture (Ghosh et al., 2001;
Riquelme and Watson, 2002). A key assumption is that successful entrepreneurs
possess certain unique attributes of personality (Baron, 1998; Kets de Vries, 1996) and
capabilities (Gartner, 1990) that can attract the support of resource providers (Baron
and Markman, 2003). With a track record of successful ventures, an
entrepreneur-leader may then become indispensible in establishing a new venture
(Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001; Martens et al., 2007).
It is further assumed that other stakeholders including the firm’s professional
managers play a passive, followers’ role (Vecchio, 2003). Both entrepreneurship and
FCB scholars have played down the role of recruited managers in a venture’s success
(Sorenson, 2000; Gomez-Mejia et al., 2003), often portraying them as agents of the
controlling family (Claessens et al., 2000). Yet when ventures fail, it is often explained
by shortcomings of the management team around the entrepreneur (Ghosh et al., 2001;
Riquelme and Watson, 2002), without questioning the entrepreneur’s own leadership
skills (Sandberg and Hofer, 1987).
From such studies we learn little of how FCB managers may contribute to the FCB’s
growth and development, although we know from entrepreneurship studies that
leadership and entrepreneurship matter in developing a successful venture. There
would therefore seem to be a void in understanding the nature of leadership in FCBs
and how the practice of leadership impacts on their growth and development. As
mid-sized FCBs already have a record of growth under family control, we suggest that
such organizations may help to illuminate these questions.

2.3 Leadership practice

In addition to researching top family and non-family managers, we suggest that
non-family, line managers can also play a leadership role. Here, line managers may
influence, for example, the way that the firm manages its customers (Spillane, 2006, p.
55), given that line managers are the first point of regular contact for most customers.
With their deep knowledge of customers, line managers may then lead the
development of customer policy by interacting routinely with other managers up and
down the management hierarchy; and their routine behavior and actions in collegial
interaction would constitute leadership practice in the firm (Spillane, 2006; Spillane
et al., 2007). We suggest that leadership practice is important in understanding the
nature of leadership in more developed, mid-sized FCBs because the presumption of a
dominant family leader has occluded understanding of how decisions are made,
particularly in FCBs that are engaged in complex businesses (Zahra et al., 2000; Miller
and Le Breton-Miller, 2005a).
Instead of dwelling on the roles of family leaders, investigating interactions between
different levels of managers produces a picture, hitherto missing in leadership studies,
of how managers at different levels of an organization may play a significant
 leadership role. It is suggested that when managers with different responsibilities Entrepreneurial
co-perform in routine settings, they often produce new knowledge of the activities leadership
being co-performed (Weick and Roberts, 1993) in order to achieve shared goals, such as
in the FCB’s further development. Building on this knowledge, further interaction
between the same individuals may result in an informed decision to take a particular
course of action. The extent to which that action then achieves the co-performers’ goals
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may alter leadership practice (Gronn, 2000; Bolden, 2007). This process of leadership 461
practice may be illustrated as follows.
There is an emerging stream of literature on leadership practice that suggests how
leaders may co-perform or distribute their influence. In helping to unravel the process
of leadership co-performance, we have drawn on the work of Spillane (2006) and
Spillane et al. (2007) who have identified three dimensions of distributed leadership:
collaborated, collective, and co-ordinated leadership. Collaborated leadership is a form
of practice where at least two individuals work simultaneously in conducting a
corporate routine, such as a board meeting. By contrast, the practice of collective
leadership involves at least two individuals who execute a routine through separate
but inter-dependent actions, such as where board directors each perform individual
roles in a board meeting, but where their activities in interaction with one other
collectively produce the practice of the meeting. Spillane (2006, p. 60) introduces a third
type of leadership practice, co-ordinated leadership, involving activities that have to be
performed in a pre-set sequence, as in a relay race, where the relay’s success – namely,
the particular practice of the relay – depends on the co-performance of participants in
an ordered, pre-agreed sequence. These dimensions of leadership practice acted as a
sensitizing guide for our research, as we now suggest.

3. Methodology
3.1 Research context
Our research setting is Singapore, a highly successful economy with international
standards of corporate regulation that has nonetheless retained its large, historical
base of FCBs and state-controlled firms. This setting has allowed us to study how
FCBs such as Sinobank that operate in a competitive, regulated environment have
grown and survived while remaining family controlled. In banking, Singapore has
issued more licences than its competitor, Hong Kong, with over 700 licences issued to
foreign and local financial institutions by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS,
2010). Local banks have to compete in a largely open market against global
competition. Banking regulations have made survival harder: for example, capital
adequacy ratios for full banks are in excess of those stipulated in New York and
London (MAS web site). Unsurprisingly in this environment, many local banks have
been unable to compete, typically selling out to competitors. Three large local banks
have survived. Two of these banks remain controlled by their founding families
although they have been professionally managed for many years.
Several old and large FCBs in Singapore (e.g. Venture Corporation) and beyond (e.g.
BMW Germany) are also professionally managed, with family shareholders typically
retaining corporate control through an investment holding vehicle. In Singapore, the
nature of such FCBs seems to reflect its conjoined business and social environment
which promotes a competitive “level-playing field” while retaining a strong social
attachment to family and state control. In this environment, Sinobank has grown
 IJEBR within two generations, first from a small FCB with a single branch into a mid-sized
16,5 commercial bank, and then following its acquisition of a large retail bank (“Retail
Bank”) into a world-ranked financial services group with over 7,000 employees and 112
branch offices in 15 countries. The bank’s founding family owns an aggregate interest
of some 30 per cent.
Until recently, Sinobank’s main business was in corporate banking. While generating
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462 high income, many bankers believed that the growth prospects of corporate banking in
Southeast Asia were lower than those of retail banking (Loh et al., 2000). Sinobank’s
family understood that the bank’s survival under family control depended on its ability
to retain a significant presence and influence in the banking industry, both locally and
internationally. To achieve this, Sinobank embarked on an ambitious growth strategy
by acquiring a new core business in retail banking. At this point in their development,
family shareholders in SMEs have typically sold out when governance problems
mentioned in the previous section bubble over (Linnemann, 2007, on the “implosion” of
German family-controlled SMEs). By contrast, Sinobank stands out as an example of a
mid-sized FCB in a competitive industry that has grown into a large PLC under the
leadership mainly of non-family managers while remaining family controlled.
In our study, we have sought to understand the extent to which Sinobank’s
leadership has shaped its new retail business and contributed to the bank’s growth and
development. The case study method of research seemed suitable because Sinobank’s
long-lived nature offered an opportunity to relate the specific event of our interest with
the bank’s overall growth and development in order to address our research questions
in depth (Karra et al., 2006). Our approach in data analysis has been as social
constructionists in which we have related research data to our literature and research
questions (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003), moving back and forth from data to our
perspective of distributed leadership in explaining how Sinobank developed a system
of leadership that has driven its development from its narrow focus into a large PLC
that competes in both corporate and retail banking (Pratt and Rafaeli, 1997).

3.2 Data collection

There were two steps in our data collection. We began by piecing together a timeline of
Sinobank’s recent development from two sources of public data (Pettigrew, 1990). First,
we obtained financial data and news on the bank from annual reports since its public
listing in 1968 and media news clips from its in-house archive. This archival data were
supplemented by private data from one-to-one interviews with five former directors
that enabled the first author to cross-check details of important corporate events
(Wengraf, 2001). We used this detail to develop our timeline into an event history (van
de Ven and Poole, 1990) tracing Sinobank’s development.
The second stage of data collection was to develop a narrative of Sinobank’s
leadership within our database of the bank’s development and to study how far its
leadership impacted on the bank’s development. We traced this relationship through
the medium of a critical incident, the acquisition of Retail Bank, that sought to
illuminate how Sinobank’s leadership system was developed and practised. We
developed our story of the acquisition through multiple one-on-one office interviews
with family directors on the main board and senior non-family, professional managers
(CEOs, executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and senior vice-presidents). A total of 40 taped
interviews of one to three hours each were conducted with 24 board directors and
 managers between 2000 and 2007. Interviews were conducted by two co-researchers, Entrepreneurial
and most of the original interviewees were re-interviewed in 2006 and 2007 for their leadership
reflections on the acquisition (Table I).
Our interviews took the form of interactive conversations based on a three-part
discussion protocol (Chell, 1998). Part 1 of the protocol explored the bank’s
development up to the acquisition. Part 2 was a questionnaire on the roles of key
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managers in the bank, including the interviewees’ own roles, and their respective 463
contributions in the acquisition of Retail Bank. This sought to compare the publicly
perceived roles of managers with what interviewees perceived to be the contribution of
individual actors in the acquisition. The questionnaire was presented to interviewees at
the start of meetings, and answers formed the basis of the subsequent discussion
(McNulty and Pettigrew, 1999). The ensuing discussion with interviewees (Part 3)
sought to reconcile the public roles of key managers with their actual roles in the
acquisition by exploring how major decisions in the acquisition were made, for
example, in the choice of Retail Bank as the acquisition target (critical incident).

3.3 Data analysis

Our data were organized and analyzed in three stages. First, data management software
was programmed to scan interview transcripts and extract and organize the most
frequently occuring words and phrases (first-order coding). Second, first-order codes
were manually grouped under the three themes at the core of our research, namely,
leadership routines, leadership practice, and distributed leadership (Maguire and
Phillips, 2008). For example, statements with words on customers (corporate, individual,
public societies), managers, employees, competitors, and other stakeholders in the bank
were organized under leadership routines (Figure 1), because as a service-based business
it followed that statements about the bank’s customers would be about how the bank
could improve its customer service. The same software then re-scanned all interview
texts to produce referenced sets of quotes under each core theme. This produced a
reference index (second-order coding) under informant, date, question, and answer.
The third stage of data analysis related second-order codes with Spillane’s three-fold
typology of distributed leadership in constructing a step-by-step narrative of the
leadership process connecting firm routine ) individual/group action ) organizational

n interviews ¼ 40
n interviewees ¼ 24 Currently employed Formerly employed

Chairmen 1 (non-family, 2a) 1 (family)

Executive directors 3 (third CEO, fourth CEO, 2a, fifth 3 (two ex-CEOs, 6a, 2a;
CEO, 3a) ex-ED, 3a)
Family non-executive 1 (2a) 1
directors
NEDs 4 (audit chair, 2a; remuneration chair) 1
Senior managers 4 2
Line managers 2 (branch manager 1, 2a, branch 1
manager 2, 2a)
Notes: aDenotes the respective number of multiple interviews; “NEDs” are non-family, independent Table I.
board directors Interviews
 IJEBR
Exclusive space for interaction
16,5 among ‘extended’ family members

Corporate agenda Corporate development

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464
Leadership Routines: Co-performance Initiating Leadership Co-performance Actualizing Distributed
managers’ consensus Practice: Knowledge Leadership:‘Extended’
on individual goals & of what & how to leadership as a key source
contributions contribute of competitive advantage

Leadership practice alters

corporate agenda, e.g. in the management
Figure 1. routine of regional centers
Sinobank’s leadership
process

outcome (Figure 1). In developing this narrative, we repeatedly referred to our

second-order codes until we were able to establish patterns between specific themes and
activities (Karra et al., 2006; Maguire and Phillips, 2008). For instance, by comparing the
activities of different managers, it turned out that a number of Sinobank’s line managers
played a leading role in its corporate development as those managers established
management routines that formed a major part of how leadership was practised in the
firm. Themes and data that were matched in this way then became the basis for our
description of the possible connection between Sinobank’s leadership, its competitive
advantage, and subsequent business growth.

4. “Extended” leadership in a mid-sized family bank

4.1 Key actors
Family director: a second-generation board representative of the founding
family.
First CEO: a non-family bank clerk who rose to become Sinobank’s first
Chairman and CEO.
Second CEO: a banker who was recruited in the 1960s and succeeded first CEO.
Interim CEO: a senior, long-serving manager.
EVP: a recruited head of Sinobank’s new retail banking division.
Branch Manager 1: a long-serving branch manager of Sinobank.
Branch Manager 2: a branch manager of the acquired firm, Retail Bank.

4.2 Roots of an extended family

Second CEO’s first role in Sinobank was to co-invest with the bank in a new venture,
which he then headed. While he was first interviewed by first CEO to succeed him as
the bank’s CEO, it was only after more than a decade in the subsidiary venture that
second CEO was appointed, first as the bank’s vice-chair and then as chair and CEO.
Although therefore being marked for the top role, second CEO endured a long period of
 assessment in which he was both an employee and a business partner who contributed Entrepreneurial
his own capital to run a new enterprise. This unusual form of preparation for a bank leadership
CEO reflected the way that other senior and junior managers in Sinobank were also
assessed and developed, or “groomed”, for a top management role. It seemed important
in the grooming process for managers to prove that they could run a successful
venture. But why had it taken so long for second CEO to rise to the top?
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I think it’s normal for a [family owned] company that we want stable people from good families 465
who can develop our business. For us a CEO is about his ability to run a business with our
shareholders the right person with initiative to succeed for our company. The fact we’re an
international bank makes it tougher to get the right fit because we have little margin for error. It
takes time for both sides to gel but when we get that match then he can run the company as freely
as his own and with just as much responsibility for its future (Interim CEO, January 18, 2002).
Close vetting a potential top manager seemed “normal” in the regulated banking
industry in which Sinobank was located where appointments of senior managers
continue to be vetted by Singapore’s central bank (MAS web site). However,
Sinobank’s method of vetting its top managers had an additional purpose in that it
effectively extended leadership in the bank beyond family members to a type of
manager – “stable people from good families” – who could be groomed to develop the
bank while keeping it under family control. Those managers were not powerless
agents of the controlling family. On the contrary, Sinobank’s best managers were
judged by their peers on their ability to show initiative and manage the firm “as freely
as [their] own” in order for the FCB to grow and survive. Here, in contrast to the more
common profile of a “nuclear” family firm led by parents and their offspring, Interim
CEO suggested that Sinobank developed an alternative, “extended” perspective of
leadership featuring talented, non-family managers where the question of who leads
and who follows in managing the FCB ranked below the process of how existing
managers co-developed a correct “match” between their goals and those of the new
member(s) of the “extended” leadership. A typical “nuclear” versus Sinobank’s
“extended” perspective of leadership may be thus illustrated.
This system of leadership soon played an important part in shaping the bank’s
future.

4.3 Making sense of an unexpected acquisition

Second CEO soon embarked on a new strategy of diversification into retail banking.
His strategy centered on the acquisition of a Hong Kong-based retail bank, and he
secured board approval and instructed Sinobank’s most senior managers, its divisional
chiefs (EVPs), to implement the acquisition. To his surprise, however, the EVPs did not
implement the acquisition. Instead, they argued in favor of a different acquisition
target in Retail Bank, a local bank that the EVPs believed was better suited to achieve
growth for Sinobank. Why did the EVPs oppose a board mandate?
EVP: [Retail Bank]’s customer base will anchor us against the ups and downs of corporate
banking. In hindsight we went against the board decision but at the time we didn’t think
about that as we were totally focused on securing the deal. What sealed the deal was the fact
that many of our branch managers had experience of integrating [Retail Bank’s] operations
because they shared the same customers and had worked on the same deals. Those managers
made the decision for us because when they told us who they were working with we told the
board and it was clear they had to go for [Retail Bank].
 IJEBR Researcher: Who were those branch managers?
16,5 EVP: As they were close to our customers we knew them well. In [the acquisition of Retail
Bank], branch managers attended meetings on a lot of sensitive stuff ( January 31, 2002).
Second CEO made a new public statement as if he still led the bid. Privately however,
he participated in discussions that were already ongoing between directors and EVPs
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466 and between EVPs and line managers far down the organization hierarchy who
already “knew how to integrate [Retail Bank’s] operations”. The EVPs identified 16 line
managers whom they knew well based on their historically close customer relations.
Those line managers seemed effectively to have led the decision to acquire Retail Bank:
For me the most important part of the [acquisition] was how our managers down the line had
met our stakeholders’ expectations of their behavior. For all the world that was clear as our
share price kept rising right through the [acquisition]. So the board was able to focus on
refining the terms of the [acquisition] rather than worry about shareholder approval (Family
Director, October 24, 2002).

4.4 Absorbing the acquisition

The concentration of activity at the level of Sinobank’s line managers and their direct
reporting to EVPs also seemed to drive the process of integrating Retail Bank’s
operations once the “sensitive stuff” behind the acquisition had been settled. The daily
work of the 16 line managers formed the core of that activity:
We combined customer accounts among all branches. That was step one in building a database
for both staff and customers to access accurate and secure data. This was important because
we wanted to reach new customers and to do so we had to make decisions in partnership with
customers and not just report news to them (Branch Manager 1, May 26, 2002).
Because of their pride in “mak[ing] decisions in partnership with customers”, line managers
took a deep interest in completing the acquisition by bringing Retail Bank’s customers over
to Sinobank and opening new accounts for them. This strong sense of responsibility had a
practical dimension in that many of the 16 line managers were promoted afterwards. In the
“extended” leadership, line managers such as Branch Manager 1 were publicly identifiable
by their ability to “show initiative” and “make decisions” beyond the authority of their given
positions. Such “groomed” managers could then play both leaders’ and followers’ roles in
pursuing the overarching goal of developing the FCB. Consequently, regardless of their
formal roles in the bank, a few line managers also began to manage the bank “as freely as
[their] own and with just as much responsibility for [their] future”:
I decide what to sell and how to sell through my regional center. That center is funded by
group but how much funding I get depends on beating profit targets agreed before. In retail
that’s tough because it’s so volatile but as I have control how I run my business is up to me
and I report to just one boss. Before I had several bosses and ended up taking the route of
least resistance. Of course, I can’t just run on my own because we need each other to make
this work (Branch Manager 2, April 4, 2005).

5. Discussion
5.1 The nature of an “extended” leadership system
In the critical incident, we presented a leadership system that was practised at two
different levels of the organization in initiating and completing a major corporate
 acquisition. Here, a detailed picture was drawn of how senior and junior managers of a Entrepreneurial
mid-sized FCB combined to develop expertise in a new business of retail banking in leadership
order to create competitive advantage. We call Sinobank’s leadership an “extended”
FCB system, namely a distinct method for developing and assessing managers in the
FCB who are regarded as high-potential managers by their mainly non-family peers.
This system stands in contrast to the more typical “nuclear” perspective of FCB studies
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that focuses on the capabilities and interests of founders and their offspring (Karra 467
et al., 2006; Ng and Roberts, 2007).
Our “extended” leadership perspective is adopted from scholarly work on
non-European FCBs that refer to a founder’s social network of distant relatives
(Redding, 1990/1993; Carney, 2005; Karra et al., 2006) and personal acquaintances
(Wong, 1998; Ng and Roberts, 2007). However, Sinobank’s “extended” system of
leadership run by professional managers seemed significantly more developed as a
system of leadership than the notion of an extended social network (Karra et al., 2006)
that is tied to and is accessible only by the founder. We believe that Sinobank’s
“extended” leadership system minimizes well-known problems of growth in mid-sized
FCBs based on prioritizing family interests by instead focusing the minds of all
managers on how to achieve growth. In so doing, typical conflicts of interest between
“inside” stakeholders of the FCB – namely, family shareholders and non-family
managers – and “outside” stakeholders also do not arise (Demsetz and Lehn, 1985;
Bennedsen and Wolfenzohn, 2000). In this discussion, we suggest how and why.
Specifically, we suggest how Sinobank’s managers were able to create competitive
advantage following their acquisition of Retail Bank despite their inexperience with the
retail banking business. Here, the actions of two different levels of managers are
explored in tracing Sinobank’s practice of “extended” leadership through a process of
“actualizing” its leadership system, when managers combined technical skills with
their knowledge of Sinobank’s leadership system to complete the acquisition.
First, how Sinobank’s managers developed a new core business to sustain its
competitive advantage was by “extending” notional membership, or “insider” status, in
the bank’s leadership to professional managers with a personal profile that suited
existing members of the “extended” leadership (“stable people from good families”). A
major incentive to outside managers was that they could then rise to the top of the FCB.
This was important for managers such as Branch Manager 2 who had been reporting
along typically hierarchical lines in Retail Bank before the acquisition. To his surprise,
he found that the acquiror was a family-controlled firm apparently without a glass
ceiling.
The “extended” nature of Sinobank’s leadership system was well established, as
second CEO’s own rise to the top had shown; and that system proved more in the sum
of its parts than merely affording privileged individuals “insider” status in closely held
firms that typically struggle to remain competitive (Bennedsen and Wolfenzohn, 2000).
Importantly, in defining the leadership system, there was:
.
a clear, overarching objective, namely the growth and survival of the bank under
family control; and
.
distinct “rules” governing membership, including a distinct process of
membership (Gronn, 2002).
 IJEBR In terms of the process of membership, selected managers were recruited and co-opted
16,5 over a period of time by one or more senior, non-family managers into the “extended”
leadership through a process of grooming. In terms of rules, members of the “extended”
family were identifiable both in a leadership role by their entrepreneurial behavior (“he
can run the company as freely as his own and with just as much responsibility for its
future”) and in a following role by their cheerleading support of other members.
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468 Accordingly, board directors supported EVPs (“went with us”), despite having
apparently altered a board mandate, and senior managers backed line managers who
unilaterally “decide to sell and how to sell” (Branch Manager 1) because they were all
focused on developing the FCB.
In terms of appreciating the apparent absence of conflict between “insiders” and
“outsiders” of the FCB, the career of first CEO proved a powerful example of what a
non-family member could achieve and how that could be achieved. Having joined as a
bank clerk, first CEO suggested how far a professional manager could be rewarded in
an “extended” leadership system when he become Sinobank’s first Chairman and CEO.
Publicly launched by first CEO when he recruited second CEO and backed by the
example of both men’s careers, a system of leadership became established that was
based on encouraging and expediting Sinobank’s growth and development. Features of
this “extended” leadership system compared with those of a “nuclear” family model
may be listed as follows (Table II).
Second CEO then developed the leadership system by encouraging senior managers
to also act as followers in supporting line managers who were better placed to direct
specific tasks, such as in augmenting Sinobank’s customer base. This may be seen in
the significant authority held by line managers over their customers. It seemed that so
long as a manager continued to produce results, then it did not matter if that manager
actually performed a leader’s or a follower’s role in a corporate situation, as all
members of the “extended” leadership would benefit from the bank’s growth and
development. As Figure 2 shows, a unique strength of Sinobank’s “extended”
leadership system seemed to be its reliance on pragmatic relationships between
managers, regardless of their formal positions. As those managers had been
handpicked by their non-family peers to join the leadership system:

“Nuclear” FFs in/beyond Singapore “Extended” FF-Sinobank

Story All-powerful entrepreneur/family leader Low-level managers lead successful

faces succession problems acquisition despite Board’s prior
decision to acquire another firm
Context of study Regulatory, minority shareholder rights New venture to grow and develop the FF
Business Stable, unregulated bricks and mortar Highly regulated, fast-changing,
competitive
Governance Family-dominant board; family only Majority non-family directors; no family
executives executives
Roles Family members own and manage, hire Develop relationships to perform
Table II. specialist agents specific tasks: who leads and follows
Key features of a subordinate to goal of FF’s growth and
“nuclear” versus survival
“extended” family firm Family’s Prior interests of individual family Prior interest in FF’ s survival over
(“FF”) perspective expectations members individual family
 Sinobank’s “extended” family system Entrepreneurial
“Atomistic”, nuclear family SinoBank’s “extended” family leadership
(doesn’t matter who leads or follows)
Family
Family shareholders,
senior outside managers
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Pro-family
469
“insiders”

Senior NEDs
(external
“Outside” relations)
Managers
stakeholders Non-family Long-serving
but share outside managers,
family’s longterm minority
objective to shareholders
grow the FF

“Empty Figure 2.
box” Sinobank’s “extended”
family system
Protected boundary of the extended family

.
any barriers between members seemed subordinate to the goal of completing a
specific task; and
.
the co-performance between members, for example, when EVPs and line
managers combined to seal an irresistible deal (“no brainer”) for Retail Bank,
could prove highly effective in completing a corporate task.

Accordingly, while it seemed ironic that subordinate managers appeared to use the
leadership system second CEO had overseen to countermand a board mandate,
nonetheless it suggested that the leadership system had worked for its principal
purpose of directing the FF’s growth and development.

5.2 Actualizing distributed leadership

Having acquired Retail Bank, Sinobank’s managers began integrating its operations
with their own by actualizing their “extended” leadership system in the newly acquired
firm. By actualizing leadership, we mean putting into practice managers’ accumulated
knowledge of Sinobank’s “extended” leadership system (Miles and Snow, 1978). That
practice engaged managers principally at two management “ends” of the “extended”
leadership, namely, EVPs at the top end, and line managers at the bottom end, in
leading two key groups of stakeholders. So, while EVPs turned to employees in their
own divisions to develop an operating structure for the new business, Sinobank’s line
managers took the critical role of winning over and retaining Retail Bank’s customers.
In retrospect, “distributing” leadership in this way made practical sense. If growth in
the new retail business was to be generated by large numbers of Retail Bank’s
customers, it seemed sensible for line managers to continue serving their own
customers by deciding how best to serve those customers.
 IJEBR Within Sinobank’s established policies, line managers developed their own
16,5 customer strategy by co-performing a single routine with their peers, namely the
management of Sinobank’s regional centers, which now began to be developed for
retail customers through the co-performance of managing the centers. In the critical
incident, Branch Manager 2 gained influence with senior and junior colleagues by
inviting them to attend routine meetings of his regional center; and he then used those
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470 meetings as a forum to create better customer products. Such meetings could then
become a source of reference for other managers to each review and improve on the
performance of their own regional centers. At a different level, EVPs with overall
responsibility for the retail business provided vital support for regional centers by
structuring the business in a sequenced, coordinated way, for instance, by ensuring
that centers were adequately funded for branch managers to complete the integration
process. Grounded in existing routines, this practice of “extended” leadership involving
junior and senior managers signalled the importance of an active, internally shared
system of managing growth for competitive advantage. Specifically, in establishing its
new retail business, Sinobank’s leadership system had become a source of competitive
advantage when it was used to win over Retail Bank’s customers to Sinobank through
its regional centers.

6. Conclusions
We posed research questions, first, on the nature of leadership in competitive,
mid-sized FCBs, and second, on how leadership practice in such firms may contribute
to their growth and survival. On the nature of leadership, we have argued in favor of a
distinct, “extended” system of leadership developed by a mid-sized FCB in managing
its growth to a larger, more competitive business that would better secure its long-run
survival. The firm’s subsequent growth involved processes of internationalization and
the development of management competencies. However, this paper is not about
internationalization or management development which we believe were strategic
choices in an “extended” leadership system focused on the FCB’s survival. Drawing on
its leadership system, Sinobank was able to integrate the operations of a new business
and produce value from the combined businesses.
On leadership practice, we have suggested how senior managers of an FCB seeking
to compete and survive augmented its governing group to include line managers by
allowing them to act entrepreneurially in directing and controlling a new business “as
if it were [their] own”. In so doing, senior managers also put into practice an “extended”
leadership system as they sought to “actualize” the co-performance capability of the
system in order to integrate the new business. During regular co-performance of
ordinary management routines, a distributed system of decision making then
developed in which junior, non-family managers played a leading role in making and
implementing strategic decisions.
Based on this analysis, our first contribution has been to fill the empirical gap in the
literature on mid-sized FCBs. Where scholars have viewed SMEs largely through the
lens of founder-entrepreneurs, by contrast we have suggested how an “extended”
system of leadership may be developed in mid-sized FCBs between different
managerial levels. Second, we have also articulated the process in which an “extended”
leadership system may sustain such FCBs through a management routine that
subsequently produced competitive advantage. This contributes to the literature
 specifically on the survival of mid-sized FCBs through a unique competency to Entrepreneurial
compete and grow. leadership
Our findings may be summarized and presented in the following propositions for
studying and reflecting on leadership in mid-sized FCBs beyond any specific context.
Principally, based on our study of co-management relationships in this form of
organization, we suggest that similar, deeply developed collaboration between
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different levels of family and non-family managers may produce competitive 471
advantage. The collaborative nature of this “extended” leadership system augments
the view of FCB scholars that deeper collaborative decision making among a wider
body of managers produces stronger development of the FCB while retaining its
competitive advantages (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2005b; Habbershon, 2006; Karra
et al., 2006), for example, from close customer relations (Carrigan and Buckley, 2008).
This view may be expressed in the following propositions:
P1a. The survival of competitive, mid-sized FCBs will depend on their ability to
develop a leadership system that distributes management control down the
management hierarchy, specifically to non-family line managers.
P1b. An effective process of distributing leadership will require a prior decision by
controlling shareholders to invest management control with non-family
managers who are capable of growing and developing the FCB.
P1c. Under P1a and P1b, non-family managers may be entrepreneurs in their own
right whose willingness to take personal risk will become an important factor
in the FCB’s growth and survival.
P1d. Given P1c, ambitious non-family managers in mid-sized FCBs will have
greater opportunities for career advancement than in other types of
organizations.
P2. Where family shareholders in FCBs no longer play a unique leadership role,
they will continue to enact an important follower’s role in supporting and
guiding top management.

6.1 Further research and limitations

Our propositions give rise to different, researchable topics. First, the entrepreneurial
approach of managers working within a board initiative for strategic expansion
suggests a case of corporate entrepreneurship (“CE”) in which our “extended”
leadership perspective may be interpreted as an attempt to innovate by developing the
FCB’s managerial capability (Sharma and Chrisman’s, 1999, p. 18, definition of CE).
Investigating CE in mid-sized FCBs may produce more instances and forms of
innovative activity that may help us to better understand how these firms can exploit
market opportunities for their own strategic development (Hitt et al., 1999).
Additionally, we may draw on the nascent strategic entrepreneurship (“SE”)
literature to better understand how FCBs can maximize the value of entrepreneurial
opportunities by developing their strategic capability. One example may be through
organizational learning (Zahra et al., 1999) that extends beyond a selected group of
managers in channelling entrepreneurial behavior into wealth-creating strategies (cf.
See Hitt et al.’s, 2001, p. 480, definition of SE). Drawing on the CE and SE literatures may
 IJEBR therefore enrich the theoretical and practical implications of Sinobank’s “extended”
16,5 leadership system. It is hoped that this paper has laid some foundations for such further
research by suggesting, specifically to scholars and managers of mid-sized FCBs, how
leadership practice may be used as a powerful tool for creating competitive advantage.
A principal limitation of our propositions is that based on a single case we cannot
claim that the observed phenomena are typical of mid-sized FCBs. Instead, our
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472 propositions are intended to encourage further, qualitative research that explores the
roles of and interaction among family shareholders and non-family managers and
among different groups of non-family constituents as the mid-sized FCB strives to
survive through continuing growth and development (Sharma, 2004; Ng and Roberts,
2007). Such research will involve comparative studies of mid-sized FCBs across different
business environments in addressing this larger question from our study: How far has
the leadership of other FCBs also helped them to grow and survive under close control?

Notes
1. In family-controlled firms, family-related shareholders hold voting rights which, when
aggregated, invest those shareholders with decision-making rights in the firm (Claessens
et al., 2000).
2. Leadership is defined as the actions of one or more powerful individuals in an organization
that influence its members’ behavior and thereby induce organizational change (Moss
Kanter, 1983).
3. Leadership practice concerns a process in which a series of actions is intentionally developed
and enacted by an organization’s members to influence its strategic direction (Spillane, 2006,
p. 16).
4. Family control is defined as board and management decision-making rights in a firm held by
family-related shareholders who act in concert to exercise these rights (Spillane, 2006, p. 16).
5. Depending on the industry, mid-sized FCBs have between 500 and 1,000 employees and an
annual turnover of up to US$50 million, as defined by the American Small Businesses
Association, web site: www.sba.gov/services/contractingopportunities/sizestandardstopi
cs/summarywhatis/index.html
6. Sinobank is a pseudonym. Pseudonyms have also been used for all interviewees in this
paper.
7. Critical incidents are instances of “extreme situations and social dramas” that make the
phenomenon of study “transparently observable” (Pettigrew, 1990, p. 275).
8. Such conflicts of interest are regarded as a typical problem of closely controlled firms where
“insiders” with decision-making rights clash with “outside” stakeholders (Hillier and
McColgan, 2008).

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About the authors

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476 Wilson Ng is a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Westminster Business School where he

teaches entrepreneurship and innovation. His research involves comparative studies of the
development and growth processes of technology start-ups in Western Europe and Asia.
Wilson Ng is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: ngw@wmin.ac.uk
Richard Thorpe is a Professor of Management Development and Head of the Management
Division at Leeds University Business School. His research interests include pay and
performance, remuneration, small business entrepreneurship, management learning and
development, and leadership.

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