This plan is the administrative edition of the course for Fall 2026. It sets out what is taught, when it is taught, what is assessed, what each assessment is worth and the dates that govern the semester. It is the version shared with the class.

Note on the start date. The first class was given as Wednesday 6 September 2026, but 6 September 2026 is a Sunday. The first Wednesday session of the Fall term is 9 September 2026, and the schedule below is dated from there.

Family businesses are the most prevalent form of business organisation in the world, and the most fragile across generations. Family involvement gives these firms distinctive goals, structures and resources, and with them distinctive management challenges. Only a marginal number of family enterprises survive a generational transition. ENT401 sets out the planning and management process that supports family harmony and business continuity.

The course gives students theoretical frameworks and practical tools for working entrepreneurially and professionally in and with family firms. It covers the family system and its culture, entrepreneurial influences, conflict and negotiation, career planning, ethics, governance, succession, strategic planning, professional support relationships, and generational, sibling and extended-family issues.

Seven units drawn from the approved outline carry the course. Unit 1 establishes what makes a family business distinct and how family dynamics affect performance. Unit 2 works on trust, family culture and the genogram. Unit 3 addresses communication, conflict and mediation. Unit 4 turns to ownership — shareholders, meetings, ownership structures and buy-sell agreements. Unit 5 is succession: successors, next-generation career plans, sibling and cousin teams, and the six stages of transition. Unit 6 covers parallel strategic planning and the governance bodies that hold a family enterprise together. Unit 7 closes on estate planning.

General objectives. The course allows participants to understand the unique aspects of a family business and its contribution to the Jamaican, Caribbean and world economy; describe the characteristics that differentiate family businesses from other businesses; identify the stakeholders of a family business and their relationship to business performance; explain the appropriate tools and planning techniques for application within a family business; and discuss the critical issues family businesses face in managing and improving performance.

The prerequisite is recorded as the outline states it: ENT101 Entrepreneurship II.

Thirteen Wednesdays, 6:00–8:00 pm, 9 September to 2 December 2026, delivered online as a live session. Topics are taken from the approved outline so students can match each week back to the unit it belongs to. Comprehensive lecture notes are posted for every session.

Monday 19 October 2026 is Heroes' Day; no Wednesday session is affected. Teaching ends Saturday 5 December 2026, and the end-of-semester assessment period runs 8–21 December 2026.

Course learning outcomes. On successful completion of this course, learners will be able to:

1. CLO1 — Describe the characteristics that differentiate family businesses from other businesses.
2. CLO2 — Identify and develop solutions for challenges faced by family businesses.
3. CLO3 — Develop strategies and techniques for effective communication, including how to approach difficult conversations and conflict.
4. CLO4 — Develop knowledge of the managerial and governance practices that can help improve the effectiveness and longevity of family firms.
5. CLO5 — Develop a succession plan for a family business enterprise that highlights key competencies and selection criteria and relates clearly to the overall strategic plan.

Programme learning outcomes. The course carries the programme outcomes as set out in the outline:

1. Outline the fundamentals of business opportunity evaluation, from the perspective of a prospective investor.
2. Identify the most recognised sources of potential funding and financing for business start-ups and/or expansion.
3. Demonstrate good skills in computer proficiency, including word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software, and basic facility with the internet and other research tools.
4. Showcase excellent speaking skills developed through in-class discussion of text materials, case study analyses and current entrepreneurship-related issues.
5. Assess their own personal work products — and critique those of their colleagues — with regard to thoroughness, creativity and application to their own future ventures.

Every course outcome is carried by at least one assessment; the mapping is set out in the Assessment Matrix.

The outline allocates 45 hours across seven units plus presentations and the two assessments. Thirteen two-hour sessions give 26 hours in class, so the balance of 19 hours is guided and independent work. The table shows where each unit's hours sit.

Unit 3 is given two full sessions because communication, conflict and mediation are practised live rather than read about; the extra hour is drawn from Unit 6, the most reading-led unit in the course, which carries five guided hours rather than six. Column totals are unchanged.

How to read this. The outline's unit hours are the recommended allocation, not a promise of class time. Thirteen evening sessions cannot carry 45 hours of material, so the germane content — the definitions, the frameworks, the instruments and the worked cases — is covered in class, and the remainder is set as directed work: assigned reading from Poza and Daughtery, case preparation, genogram and succession-plan drafting, and team work on the group project. Directed work for each week is given at the end of the session and is assumed in the assessments.

Guided work by unit:

• Unit 1 (2 h) — lecture notes and the Poza chapters on the family business system; regional and local data on family firms.
• Unit 2 (1 h) — lecture notes; construction of a genogram for the chosen case family.
• Unit 4 (2 h) — lecture notes; reading a buy-sell agreement and drafting its principal clauses.
• Unit 5 (4 h) — lecture notes; Aronoff and McClure on succession; drafting the next-generation career plan for the group project.
• Unit 6 (5 h) — lecture notes; Aronoff and Ward on governance; parallel planning exercise and board/family council design for the group project.
• Unit 7 (2 h) — lecture notes; reading on estate taxes, trusts and transfer pitfalls.
• Presentations (1 h) — rehearsal and revision before Week 13.
• EOSA (2 h) — structured revision in the study period before the assessment.

Coursework is 60% and the end-of-semester assessment is 40%. There are four individual assignments, a group project and presentation, and the mid-semester assessment. Every piece of coursework is posted on the class page on the date shown and students have ten days to submit. The group project is deliberately set early, in Week 3, and falls due in Week 12 so teams have the bulk of the semester to work.

The group project. It is briefed in Week 3 and marked against three outcomes, not against units: CLO 2 — identifying and developing solutions for the challenges a family business faces; CLO 4 — the managerial and governance practices that improve effectiveness and longevity; and CLO 5 — a succession plan that sets out key competencies and selection criteria and relates to the overall strategic plan. Each team takes a real or composite family firm and produces a governance and succession proposal for it. The written project and the presentation are both due Wednesday 25 November 2026, the penultimate session. Teams that cannot be heard within Week 12 present at the start of Week 13.

Checkpoints so the work does not slide. Team membership confirmed by Week 4 (Wed 30 Sep); family firm and scope confirmed by Week 6 (Wed 14 Oct); progress check in the applied segment of Week 9 (Wed 4 Nov).

Rules that apply. Coursework is released on the class page with the brief, the marking guide and the due date, and the ten-day window is standard unless a longer one is announced in the session. Assignment 4 is posted in the final session and its ten-day window therefore closes on Saturday 12 December 2026, during the assessment period. Students must do all pieces of coursework, pass the end-of-semester assessment and reach 50% overall to pass the course. The mid-semester assessment sits inside the official window of 25–31 October 2026; the alternative sitting is 7–8 November 2026 for students with an approved deferral. Lecturer submission deadlines: the MSA paper is due to the school by Sunday 20 September 2026 and the EOSA paper by Sunday 27 September 2026.

Note on the outline's weighting. The outline's online-delivery scheme reads: case study/assignments 15%, chats/discussions 10%, group project and presentation 15%, MSA 20%, EOSA 40%. The 15 and the 10 are delivered together here as the four graded individual assignments totalling 25%, which keeps coursework at 60% and the overall total at 100%.

This is the assessment matrix exactly as it appears in the approved ENT401 course outline. Every learning outcome is assessed and both the rows and the columns total 100.

How this reaches you in practice: the mid-semester assessment carries 20 marks, the group project and presentation 15, and the end-of-semester assessment 40, exactly as shown. The assignment column (25) is delivered as four graded individual assignments — assignments 1 and 2 at 5 marks each, assignments 3 and 4 at 7.5 marks each — which is where the outline's case study/assignment and chats/discussion allocations are carried. Coursework therefore accounts for 60 marks and the end-of-semester assessment for 40.

The group project's 15 marks sit on CLO 2 (5), CLO 4 (5) and CLO 5 (5), so the group work is set and marked against those three outcomes rather than against a block of units.

The outline prescribes lectures, class discussions, guest lectures, field trips, group activities and presentations, and case studies with handouts. All are used, delivered online in a weekly live session.

• Lectures carry the frameworks and instruments — the family business system, the genogram, governance bodies, the succession and estate tools — supported by comprehensive lecture notes posted every week.
• Class discussions run in the live session and in breakout rooms, which is where the communication and conflict material is practised rather than described.
• Guest lectures are sought from a family-firm principal or a family business adviser, joining the live session; a guest for Unit 5 or Unit 6 is yet to be confirmed.
• Field trips are not practical under online delivery; they are replaced by virtual site visits and recorded family-firm interviews, with the same observation task attached.
• Group activities and presentations run through the group project, briefed in Week 3 and submitted and presented in Week 12, with Week 13 held for any remaining presentations. It is marked against CLO 2, CLO 4 and CLO 5.
• Case studies and handouts accompany every unit, with the case posted ahead of the session.

Standard two-hour online session

Sessions run on the university's online platform. Students join with camera and microphone available for the applied segment.

Required text

• Poza, E., & Daughtery, M. (2018). Family business (5th ed.). Cengage.

Recommended readings

• Aronoff, C., & McClure, S. (2011). Family business succession: The final test of greatness. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Aronoff, C., & Ward, J. (2011). Family business governance: Maximizing family and business potential. Palgrave Macmillan.

Other resources

Books, periodicals, business magazines, handouts, newspaper articles and journals, as listed in the outline. Regional family-firm coverage from the Jamaican and Caribbean business press is used for local cases.

The Library and Information Centre supports access to the journals and databases: (876) 906-3000, asklibrary@ucc.edu.jm.

Attendance and participation. Attendance is expected at all 13 online sessions. Participation in the live session — case discussion, breakout work and the question of the week — is part of the course, and work missed through absence is still due.

Referencing. All written work uses APA referencing. Sources must be cited in text and listed at the end.

Academic integrity. The university's plagiarism policy applies in full. You will be charged with plagiarism if you copy from published sources without adequate documentation; appropriate the ideas, language, key terms or findings of another without sufficient acknowledgement; purchase a pre-written paper; or let someone else write a paper for you — intention is not a defence. Whenever you draw on another's work you must specify what you borrowed, whether facts, opinions or quotations, and where you borrowed it from. Style manuals and guidance on documentation are available through UCC's Library and Information Centre. If an assignment is difficult, contact the lecturer and discuss a strategy for completing it rather than risk the charge.

Late work. Assignments submitted after the due date are penalised under the school's standard late-submission rule. Extensions require written approval before the due date.

Assessment rules. Students must complete all pieces of coursework, pass the end-of-semester assessment and reach 50% overall to pass ENT401. Deferral of the mid-semester assessment requires approval; the alternative sitting is 7–8 November 2026.

Support. Lecture notes are posted for every session. Questions about the course can be posted through the class link to this plan; the lecturer sees them and answers in the session or in writing.