Family Business Succession Planning Research Articles

Exploring Succession Planning within Small Family Owned Businesses

Succession planning involves the training of next-generation family members to remain as the core value in a family business. However, small family firms are facing higher risks of failure because the succession process does not receive much interest. Therefore, it is vital to find effective ways to transfer the less tangible considerations to the next generation family members. This paper will addresses several issues of family business succession planning, with the purpose of identifying the main triggers for succession, criteria of a good successor and types of education required to run the family business. This research employs a multi-method approach, where the distribution of survey questionnaires, interviews and observations were conducted over time. A total of 388 family businesses answered the questionnaires and from the findings, tacit knowledge, achieved from informal education, was the contemporary way of transferring the business, from the owner to the successor. It also explains the current trend of succession planning and the key issues associated with successfully development principle successors. Moreover, this paper provides the relationship between succession issues and the performance of Malaysian small family businesses.

Family business governance for ensuring a qualified management succession in a family business – how to cope with the increasing amount of management successions in German family businesses

Family businesses are the fundamental basis of the German medium-sized enterprises. Business succession planning, i.e., transfer of management functions and ownership to one or more family members, gained a significant importance over the last few years. This article aims to analyse the characteristics of the family business succession planning, underlines the significance of family business governance for ensuring the qualified management succession and gives suggestions on how to implement the German Governance Code recommendations in family businesses.

Succession Planning for a First-Generation Family Business

Proper succession planning for the transfer of a family business between the first and second generations can set the stage for the future success of the business. To illustrate the complexities of ownership, business, and family issues, a case study is presented along with suggestions on how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls in family business succession planning.

Family business succession planning

Family business succession planning

Succession Planning in Family Business: The Impact of Owner Gender

Research on succession planning in family businesses has largely neglected issues linked to owner gender. The present study examines the extent to which differences are evident between male- and female-led family businesses in succession planning processes. Using data from a national survey of family-business owners, we explore the predictors of the comprehensiveness of succession planning. The results confirm that there are similarities and differences between males and females in the determinants of succession planning.

IRS Estate Freeze Rules: Implications for Family Business Succession Planning

This article examines the estate freeze rules of the Internal Revenue Service with respect to their implications for family business succession planning. Specifically, the tax impact of the valuation rules for transfers of certain interests, transfers in trust, buy-sell agreements, and lapsing rights are all reviewed in order to provide recommendations for family business planning.

Separation of Ownership and Control

ABSENT fiat, the form of organization that survives in an activity is the one that delivers the product demanded by customers at the lowest price while covering costs.1 Our goal is to explain the survival of organizations characterized by separation of "ownership" and "control"-a problem that has bothered students of corporations from Adam Smith to Berle and Means and Jensen and Meckling.2 In more precise language, we are concerned with the survival of organizations in which important decision agents do not bear a substantial share of the wealth effects of their decisions. We argue that the separation of decision and risk-bearing functions observed in large corporations is common to other organizations such as large professional partnerships, financial mutuals, and nonprofits. We contend that separation of decision and risk-bearing functions survives in these organizations in part because of the benefits of specialization of