Success with succession: an empirical study of small Swedish family firms

Abstract

Successful succession in small family firms may be a key to sustainability for the individual firm but also to regional growth. This paper examines how leadership succession factors associated to attitudes, norms and perceived behavioural control of leading actors in a small family firm can be related to how well the succession process works and to the firm's post-transition performance. We structure factors pointed out in earlier studies according to Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (TpB) where we put forward hypotheses for the three areas. The results based on a survey of 55 small family firms that have experienced a leadership succession show that TpB works well for understanding a successful succession process, but is dismal for understanding post-transition performance. The strongest results are found for aspects linked to perceived behavioural control and attitudes.