One of the main challenges facing family firms is achieving fairness between family and non-family employees in the workplace. Family and non-family employees have the potential to offer unique and distinct contributions to the firm, which makes the achievement of fairness between them messy and complicated. Hence, two interesting questions are worth exploring: Given the complex nature of the family business human capital, how can family firms achieve fairness between family and non-family employees? Why should family business decision makers and advisors promote fair practices in the family business workplace? We first introduce a fair process model as a possible solution for family businesses to achieve fairness between family and non-family employees. Then, based on several examples and studies, we show that family business owners can benefit significantly from promoting fairness in the workplace both in terms of preserving business reputation and in terms of achieving long-term family business survival and success.

FUTUR is a small nonprofit organization founded in Barcelona in 1996. Its aim is to create social and labor opportunities for potentially excluded individuals such as ex-convicts, single mothers with no income, battered women, the homeless, people over 45 years old affected by long-term unemployment, drug and alcohol addicts, and immigrants mostly from Latin America and Northern Africa with problems adapting to life in Barcelona. The type of jobs FUTUR has provided these individuals has changed over time. The organization started operating in the textile sector and later shifted its focus entirely to food services. It has also been committed to fair-trade and environmentally-friendly products. FUTUR opened several restaurants and later expanded into catering services and, more recently, to school cafeterias, the latter becoming a very successful venture. They were also ready to launch a new business to supplement these initiatives. It was based on selling organic, fair-trade products on the streets with salespeople riding specially adapted bicycles. However, the organization needed to find new facilities equipped with an industrial kitchen as it had to move from the building it was currently renting for a nominal price. With so many initiatives underway, Manuel Almirall pondered the pros and cons of diversification for an organization like FUTUR and whether it should concentrate on a single venture. Specifically, he wondered what strategy would be more effective to fulfill the organization's mission while maintaining sustainable growth and moving its central kitchen for its restaurants and catering services.

For over 25 years, Cristobal Colon, La Fageda's founder and president, had managed this cooperative that primarily produced yogurts and dairy puddings and employed a large share of La Garrotxa's mentally challenged population. Colón had been able to position these yogurts made in a small town far from Barcelona's commercial hub right next to Danone products, the undisputed dairy sector leader in Spain, on supermarket and hypermarket shelves. La Fageda had accomplished this feat by producing a quality yogurt that consumers viewed as a farm product: natural and wholesome. By late 2007, Colón's overriding concern was how to keep La Fageda's yogurts in distribution circuits. On the one hand, large food multinationals had ever-increasing leverage with retailers; on the other hand, some leading chains were prioritizing their own brands. Colón wondered if La Fageda could maintain its competitive positioning while upholding its founding spirit. For him, it was paramount to preserve the jobs that enabled La Fageda to ensure social and labor integration for people with mental disabilities.

Presents the background of the Spanish courier and urgent parcel service company MRW and its financial situation in the first quarter of 2004. At that time, the urgent delivery service sector was immersed in a process of growth. There was strong competition within the sector and MRW occupied one of the leading positions. Places special emphasis on the social initiatives of MRW and its franchising system, which was used as an expansion strategy. But this system entailed important coordination issues, which led to the creation of a Committee of Ethics and Arbitration. Begins when MRW's central office interviewed a prospective candidate interested in buying a franchise which was left free due to early retirement. The candidate appeared to be a very competent manager who would get results for the franchise in an industrial zone, benefiting the entire network. Nevertheless, he expressed his doubts about the usefulness of MRW's social plans. Javier Marza (assistant general manager of MRW) and Paco Sosa (director of external relations) considered whether they should be concerned about convincing a franchise holder in particular as to the social enterprise of the company. This raised the question of the place social enterprise had in MRW's strategy and of the need to re-evaluate its impact in detail, especially during a phase of growth and renovation in the franchise network, and in the mid-term, with a view to the eventual retirement and replacement of the company's founder, who had always shown clear leadership. All of this could present difficulties for the continuity of the company's culture.