Incumbent Decisions about Succession Transitions in Family Firms: A Conceptual Model

Britta Boyd, Isabel C. Botero and Tomasz A. Fediuk
Additional contact information
Britta Boyd: Department for Border Region Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Alsion 2, 6400 Sønderborg, Denmark
Isabel C. Botero: Department of Management, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0034, USA
Tomasz A. Fediuk: Fediuk Botero LLC, Lexington, KY 40515, USA

IJFS, 2014, vol. 2, issue 4, 1-24

Abstract: In the family business literature, succession research has focused on the family member as they enter the leadership role or on the different issues that affect the succession process. Although researchers have acknowledged that succession in family businesses is “punctuated” by decision making events, less attention has been given to understanding how incumbents make decisions about ownership and management transitions. In an effort to continue to understand the succession process it is important to understand how incumbents make decisions about the type of transitions they intend to engage in ( i.e. , intra-family succession, out of family succession, or no succession). Building on the theory of planned behavior and the socioemotional wealth framework (SEW), this manuscript presents a conceptual framework to understand the factors that influence succession transitions and the role that contextual factors can play in this decision-making process. We present theory driven propositions and discuss the implications for understanding and evaluation of the succession process.

Keywords: decision-making; ownership transition; management transition; succession intent; succession in family firms; theory of reasoned action (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F2 F3 F41 F42 G1 G2 G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/2/4/335/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/2/4/335/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijfss:v:2:y:2014:i:4:p:335-358:d:41925

Access Statistics for this article

IJFS is currently edited by Ms. Hannah Lu

More articles in IJFS from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().