Parents’ Learning Mechanisms for Family Firm Succession: An Empirical Analysis in Spain through the Lens of the Dynamic Capabilities Approach

Natalia Martin-Cruz, Ismael Barros Contreras, Juan Hernangómez Barahona and Héctor Pérez Fernández
Additional contact information
Natalia Martin-Cruz: School of Economics and Management, University of Valladolid, 47002 Valladolid, Spain
Ismael Barros Contreras: Department of Management and Industry, Universidad Austral de Chile, Puerto Montt 5480000, Chile
Juan Hernangómez Barahona: School of Economics and Management, University of Valladolid, 47002 Valladolid, Spain
Héctor Pérez Fernández: School of Economics and Management, University of Valladolid, 47002 Valladolid, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 19, 1-17

Abstract: Succession is a concern for most family firms. The literature has addressed succession in family firms from different perspectives. However, there are still unaddressed questions concerning the microfoundations of succession, and there is a need to secure a better understanding of the succession process and what role parents play therein. Using the dynamic capabilities approach, we shed light on the influence of parents’ behaviors on successors’ intentions. In particular, the paper pursues a twofold aim; first, to analyze the effect of learning mechanisms that parents deliberately use with their children in the family firm on the succession dynamic capability; and second, to explore the impact of this dynamic capability of successor intention to continue in the family firm. We test the model on a sample of potential successors of family firms in Spain. Using partial least squares (PLS) for a sample of 9146 individuals, we confirm the positive impact of the use of parents’ deliberate learning mechanisms on succession dynamic capability and, in turn, the positive effect of the created succession dynamic capability on the successor’s intention to continue the family firm. Furthermore, we find that perceived self-efficacy fails to have any effect on successor intention.

Keywords: succession; empirical–quantitative; structural equation modeling; dynamic capability; parents’ learning mechanisms; intentions; family firm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/8220/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/8220/ (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:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:19:p:8220-:d:424213

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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