Business Groups--large, diversified, often family-controlled organizations, such as the Japanese keiretsu and the Korean chaebol--have played a significant role in national economic growth, especially in emerging economies. Earlier variants can also be found in the trading companies, often set up in Britain, which operated in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Business Groups are often criticized as premodern forms of economic organization, and occasionally as symptomatic of corrupt 'crony capitalism', but many have shown remarkable resilience, navigating and adjusting to economic and political turbulence, international competition, and technological change.