Is exposure to the family firm always good for the next CEO? How successor pre-succession firm experience affects post-succession performance in family firms

Baris Istipliler, Jan-Philipp Ahrens, Suleika Bort and Andrew Isaak

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2023, vol. 167, No 114179, 15 pages

Abstract: The benefits of pre-succession family firm experience have frequently been emphasized. However, empirical research on the impact of such experience on firm performance is dichotomy-driven and offers contradictory results. Further, there are also unresolved theoretical fault-lines. While psychology-inspired managerial decision-making literature highlights negative aspects of such experience, stewardship-inspired arguments highlight positive effects. In this study, we integrated arguments from both perspectives to investigate how pre-succession firm experience affects firm performance. Based on a sample of 405 German firms, our regression analyses show that although the main performance impact of pre-succession family firm experience is negative, this effect has important boundary conditions. In particular, our results show that this relationship takes an inverse u-shaped form for non-family successors. Further, our study reveals that the main negative relationship is stronger when the successors do not have academic education or if the innovation impetus of the firm and industry is high.

Keywords: CEO succession; Pre-succession firm experience; Performance; Family Firms; Stewardship; Managerial Decision-Making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 D91 F23 G32 J24 L21 L22 M10 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/329771/1/F ... for-the-next-CEO.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:espost:329771

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114179

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().