They’re Birds of a Feather--Except in Business : Poultry: The management styles of Frank Perdue and his son differ vastly. But under Jim Perdue, the chicken processor has become even bigger under a new management style.

Jim Perdue and his famous father, Frank, both have a passion for the chicken business.

But the men, and their missions, are very different.

Frank Perdue was a workaholic who built Perdue Farms Inc. into the nation’s fourth-largest poultry processing concern. His son, James A. Perdue, is a soft-spoken man who is taking the family-owned business into the next century with a proposed merger, state-of-the-art processing plants and a focus on families.

Jim Perdue, the youngest of four children and the only son, puts in 12-hour days but still has enough time left to coach his children’s soccer teams.

“There’s a strong work ethic at Perdue, but I think it’s important for people to have balance in their lives,” said Perdue, 44.

“Dad, in building the business, he put in the hours. I seldom saw him as a child growing up. He could spend 18 hours a day at the plant and get by on three or four hours’ sleep. He had a cot in his office, even though he only lived 50 yards away.”

Those who know the two agree that Jim and Frank are men of distinct personalities who have used their special skills in doing what’s best for the company.

“Certainly Frank was and still is the entrepreneur and Jim still has the entrepreneurial spirit. But he also has the education and the temperament and the understanding that the company needs to move into a different type of management now,” said Bill Roenigk, senior vice president of the National Broiler Council, the trade association for poultry processors.

“It’s much more complex now in terms of the issues you deal with in the marketplace. Jim seems to have an understanding of that,” Roenigk said.

Frank Perdue, 74, is chairman of the company’s executive committee and still has a say in company affairs. But Jim Perdue, who became chairman of the company in 1991, is very much in charge.

Jim Perdue is negotiating a merger with Showell Farms, the 10th-largest poultry processor, also headquartered on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

In the coming years, he foresees expansion in retail markets in the Midwest--most of Perdue’s business is currently in the East--and in exports to Southeast Asia. He wants the company to expand its turkey business and food-services division.

“Growth for us has to be market driven. We don’t want to be the biggest poultry business. We want to be the best. That drives our growth plan,” Perdue said.

Perdue credits his father for making a lot of single-handed decisions and expanding the company. But with the transition from Frank to Jim came a change in management style, largely because Perdue Farms was no longer an entrepreneurial concern, but a major corporation with 13,800 employees in 10 processing plants in six states and $1.3 billion in sales.

“We’re a bigger operation now. It’s a matter of using a lot more teamwork in running the business. That’s a concept a lot of corporations use. It’s a sign of the times,” Perdue said.

Perdue said he respects and welcomes his father’s advice, and there’s a healthy tension between the two as they continue to work together.

Perdue chuckled as he recalled decisions he has made that grated on his father. One was when the younger Perdue decided to scrap the variety of company labels for a uniform blue logo that simply reads “Perdue.”

“It’s simpler and clearer. It represents all the products,” Perdue said. “(Frank) accepted it. But he let me know he would have gone in a different direction.”

Perdue began laying the groundwork years ago to emerge from his father’s shadow. After working for the company during summers in high school, he went off to Wake Forest University in North Carolina to study not chickens, but fish.

He got a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in marine biology from Southeastern Massachusetts University, then went to the University of Washington in Seattle for a doctorate in fisheries. Perdue has an interest in fish farming, but don’t expect to see Perdue fish sticks anytime soon.

He said he had to leave home to “have some victories of my own.”

“I was applying for and getting research monies and making presentations in fisheries,” he said.

Then he had to decide whether to pursue a career in academics or return to the poultry business.

In 1983, he came back to Salisbury to run the family business his grandfather, Arthur W. Perdue, founded in 1920, raising chickens to sell the eggs.

“I felt ready to come back. Self-confidence is something you gain from those victories,” he said.

Perdue, who is married and has three children of his own, doesn’t see his father ever getting completely out of the business to which he devoted his life.

“He’s delegated authority very well for someone who is a strong entrepreneur,” Jim Perdue said. “The thing that has driven him his whole life is the success of the company. It’s a tough business and it took a tough man to do it.”

Ask Frank Perdue how he thinks his son is doing and he says: “I couldn’t be prouder.”