Market-oriented succession effectiveness in family business – Case-based evidence from Cyprus family-owned wine business

Abstract

The incessant effort towards long-term survival and competitiveness is especially strong among family businesses, which, due to their unique characteristics, face particular challenges that jeopardize their business potential and market orientation. The aim of this paper is to identify, explicate and interrelate the critical factors of a strategic and holistic market-oriented succession process within Cypriot family-owned wineries. This empirical study was conducted through the perceptual lens of two key stakeholder groups: incumbents and family owners. And applied two methods, collected in two phases. The first included a survey with 52 family-owned wineries operating across the Republic of Cyprus, and the second encompassed 16 in-depth personal interviews with incumbents and successors from six wineries. The originality and novel theoretical contribution of the paper is twofold: (a) it employs, expounds and interrelates extant theories with solid empirical findings to provide a descriptively comprehensive understanding of the key market-oriented family business succession principles within Cyprus’s family-owned wine industry, and (b) it prescriptively develops the WineSuccess Framework®, which unequivocally intertwines 16 fundamental factors that contribute to the implementation of an effective market-oriented succession process in the same and comparable contexts.