案例库 · 战略与领导 · 战略决策 · 2002
这条还没译成中文，下面是英文原文。
Lee Kum Kee wrote a family constitution to prevent feuds
Lee Kum Kee wrote a family constitution barring in-laws from shares and requiring heirs to work outside first, so disputes settle by document, not leverage.
Lee Kum Kee Group
那一手
Lee Kum Kee, founded in 1888 as a small oyster-sauce maker in Guangdong, had already fractured twice in earlier generations over control of the business, and by the late 1990s patriarch Lee Man Tat was again facing open battles for control within the family, including with his own brother, threatening to repeat the pattern into a fourth and fifth generation.
Rather than resolve that particular fight and move on, the family concluded that the underlying vulnerability was structural: with no agreed rules for who could own shares, who could work in the business, and who decided what, every generational transition would reopen the same fight from scratch. In 2002 they set out to write those rules down while relations were calm enough to agree on them, rather than during the next crisis.
The centerpiece is a Family Council of seven family members meeting quarterly, which sits above a formal Family Constitution governing the whole clan's relationship to the business, deliberately separating who owns the company from who runs it. The constitution's specific rules include: only descendants in the bloodline may hold shares; the company will not hire in-laws; and heirs must work outside the family business, in an unrelated organization, before they are permitted to join it -- Lee Man Tat's own children first earned degrees and outside work experience in food science, chemical engin
为什么管用
- Writing rules while calm avoids negotiating under the high emotion and leverage of an active feud.
- Binding eligibility rules remove the ambiguity that makes each succession a fresh power struggle.
- A family council with enforcement teeth ensures the constitution is applied, not ignored.
- Mandatory retirement ages and non-family executive options prevent any one generation from entrenching.
可以搬走什么
When a shared asset becomes a recurring battleground, write rules for who qualifies, who decides, and who is excluded while calm, so future disputes settle by document, not power struggle.
后来呢
The council has run since 2002 with no repeat of the earlier splits, guiding the firm through a 5th generation and to ~$15B in value.
资料来源
- A Case Study Of Lee Kum Kee: The Paradigm Of Good Governance
- A $15 Billion Oyster Sauce Family Plots to Survive 1,000 Years
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