Christine Blondel

Christine Blondel is Adjunct Professor of Family Business at INSEAD. She co-directs the Family Enterprise Challenge, INSEAD four-day educational programme for family businesses. She advises several business families, serves on boards of traded family-influenced companies and regularly speaks in conferences.

She coordinated INSEAD activities in the field of family firms from their creation in January 1997 to December 2007 and was the first Executive Director of the Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise at INSEAD. INSEAD’s activities in the field of family firms were initiated thanks to the Wendel family – active in business since 1704 - and reinforced by the Tetra Laval Research Fund for the Large Family Firm, the Berghmans/Lhoist Chair in entrepreneurial leadership, gifts from INSEAD alumni, and the André and Rosalie Hoffmann Chair and Research Fund in Family Enterprise. The activities include optional courses on family firms for MBA and executive education participants; research and development of pedagogical cases; roundtables for representatives of large family firms; a four-day programme for business families : « The Family Enterprise Challenge », and tailor-made programmes for family businesses.

Christine Blondel is the lead author of the book” L’entreprise familiale sauvera-t-elle le capitalisme? Portraits” (Editions Autrement, janvier 2008), written with Anne Dumas. She contributed to several articles, cases and books on topics including large, multi-generational family firms, successors’ dilemma, Fair Process, governance, women in the family business, and the sale of the family business. Her case “the Resort in Pueblo Valley” received the 2008 award from the European Case Clearing House in the Entrepreneurship category. The research article “Fair Process; Striving for Justice in Family Business” (authored by Ludo Van der Heyden, Christine Blondel and Randel Carlock) received the 2006 FBN Research Honours for the best published article on family business practices.

Christine Blondel was a board member of the Family Business Network (FBN) from 2001 to 2004, and a founding board member of the International Family Enterprise Research Academy (IFERA). She is a member of the Family Firm Institute, a network of academics and advisors. She was trained to facilitate the « Road Map for Business Families » by the Institute for Business Families in Montreal, Canada.

A graduate from INSEAD (MBA 1981) and Ecole Polytechnique (France, promotion 1977) she worked 3 years as a management consultant before joining Procter & Gamble, where she had positions in Marketing (Brand Manager) and Finance (Associate Finance Director) (1984 to 1993). A mother of four children, her interest for family business finds its roots in her own family: both her grand-fathers were owner-managers of such businesses.

RESEARCH AREAS

Family firms: large multi-generational family firms, successors'dilemma, Fair Process