When Priya took over her family's restaurant business, everyone expected her to be at the front line every single day. But after she started using video calls and cloud software to manage orders and communicate with her team, she could work from home when her children needed her — and her restaurant actually ran smoother. A new study suggests that more women like Priya could become leaders of family businesses if companies adopted flexible digital tools.
Researchers at the University of East London found that technologies like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Workspace, and cloud-based business systems can help women balance family duties with taking on leadership roles. Their paper, published in the journal Strategy & Leadership, argues that these tools shift the focus from whether someone is physically present in an office to whether they are actually getting results.
Family businesses are often thought of as warm, supportive places to work because relatives trust each other. But the researchers say these firms can actually be harder for women to lead. In many family businesses, the next leader is chosen through informal family conversations rather than formal job applications. Traditional ideas about gender — the belief that women should handle caregiving while men handle business — can make it harder for women to be seen as the obvious successor.
The study proposes four ways digital tools can help women rise to leadership positions: by building their confidence, creating more chances to join important decisions, increasing their knowledge of the business, and changing what people think a leader should look like.
Yet the researchers stress that technology alone is not enough. Family businesses also need cultures that value results over physical presence and actively support women in leadership roles.
"Family businesses are built around close relationships, but that does not automatically make them easier places for women to become leaders," said Dr. Ozlem Ozdemir from the Royal Docks School of Business and Law, one of the paper's authors. "It can be tougher for women family members to be seen as ambitious professionals. Digital workplace tools can help shift the focus from who is seen most often in the office to who is making the strongest contribution."
Her co-author, Professor Kirk Chang, added that tools like cloud-based collaboration platforms can open new doors for talented women to show their leadership skills. But he warned that lasting change only happens when businesses judge leaders by what they achieve, not by whether they are in the building.
The research brings together existing studies to build a framework showing how digital workplace tools might help more women become the next generation of leaders in family businesses.