Healing Power

A recent survey shows more than 25 percent of family businesses plan to choose a woman as their next chief executive officer. This figure is especially significant considering it's more than five times the 4.7 percent of respondents whose businesses are now headed by female CEOs.

The 1997 Arthur Andersen/Mass Mutual American Family Business Survey reflects the trend of more women being raised to consider a career in business, says Wayne Reid, an associate director of the Arthur Andersen Center of Family Business LLP in Houston.

The study also found that 42 percent of respondents expected their businesses to be run by co-CEOs in the next generation, and that 42 percent of those indicated one of their chiefs might be a woman.

Will women leaders turn the tide of family business? "There are strengths that women bring to business in their management style," says Reid. "And family [members] are realizing they could use those strengths in their own businesses."

This article was originally published in the October 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Healing Power.