Succession in Family Firms – From Planning to Successor Selection

Abstract

Succession is a complex process. It touches issues related to transfer of ownership, management and knowledge in family firms. It is a process that requires adequate preparation stage and needs to be planned in time. It starts much before successor involvement in business matters, and ends up with incumbent retirement. In relation to the aforementioned argumentation the aim of the paper is evaluation and synthesis of the most crucial achievements in the field of research on succession in family firms. The paper is a review of scientific works discussing the process of conducting succession in family firms, from planning stage to the successor selection. The paper is based on articles published in well‑known foreign journals and covers the period of the past 40 years. Conducted research proved that different scholars involved in family entrepreneurship research show their unabated interest in succession problems. Transferring the business to the next generation is still a controversial issue and there is no way to avoid many personal or business conflicts.