scholarly journals Intergenerational Management Succession: Specificities of the Portuguese Family Business

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Marques ◽  
Ana Isabel Couto

Family firms are considered the world’s most predominant form of business organisation. Notwithstanding the fact that there is a lack of consensus with regards to their definition, on recognise that family firms are different from non-family businesses due to their specific relations at three levels, namely ownership, business and family. It would appear that the family influences, shapes and conditions both the firm and its continuity, mainly through the intergenerational management succession, its planning and effectiveness. According to a recent research focused on the entrepreneurial succession in Portugal (AEP, 2011), 50% of family businesses are not passed on to the second generation, and only 20% reach the third generation. Also, taking into account the main results from the project “Roadmap for Portuguese Family Businesses” (NORTE2020/FEDER), the empirical findings have proved that the business succession planning has been identified as one of the most challenging steps in the life of the family firm, which demands for appropriate analysis. In fact, resistance to succession, relationship founder/ successor, planning of succession, type of organisational culture, among others, explain how executive succession is one of the most important and hardest tasks in organisational life. In this article, we aim to discuss the main management challenges of a family business, particularly the importance of succession preparation and the role of the family in the socialisation of the second (third or subsequent) generation. Based on an online survey (N 1148) and on in-depth interviews conducted to founder/ manager/ owner (N 23), we will seek to point out major challenges faced by the Portuguese family business, as far as this matter is concerned.

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Marques ◽  
Leandro Alves da Silva

Family business has been the focus of several studies over the last two decades and its relevance has been supported by the interdisciplinary perspectives in the fields of management, entrepreneurship, economics, psychology, and sociology. Despite that, there is still insufficient knowledge about the key role of family influences in the business, namely the intergenerational management succession, its planning and effectiveness. According to a recent research focused on the entrepreneurial succession in Portugal (AEP, 2011), 50 percent of family businesses are not passed on to the second generation and only 20 percent reach the third generation. In fact, business succession planning has been identified as one of the most challenging steps in the life of the family firm, both in maintaining the competiveness of the business, and in overcoming intra/ inter family conflicts. Nonetheless, resistance to succession, relationship founder/ successor, planning of succession, and type of organisational culture, among others, explain how executive succession is one of the most important and hardest tasks in organisational life (Zahra, 2005). This paper will be supported mainly by qualitative data, taking into account the main results from the project “Roadmap for Portuguese Family Businesses” (NORTE2020/FEDER) developed in Portugal (Marques, 2018) and in Brazil (Silva, 2018), which analyses in-depth interviews conducted to Portuguese (N 23) and Brazilian (N 11) founders/managers/owners. In the present article we wish to discuss the main management challenges of a family business, particularly the importance of succession preparation and the role of the family in the socialisation of the second (third or subsequent) generation.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Kie Kuong Tang ◽  
Wan Sabri Hussin

PurposeThis research study focusses on the succession challenges in small-medium outboard marine businesses of Malaysian Chinese family ownership. The founder-owners face challenges in convincing the next-generation members to establish their careers within the family business and to ensure successions are in place to safeguard the family's wealth. A gap exists in the research literatures concerning such family business owners; and their experiences would provide valuable information to other Malaysian Chinese family businesses planning to start the succession journey.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory case study methodology to research five Malaysian Chinese family businesses cases in Klang Valley, Selangor, Malaysia, is used in this study. The primary qualitative data were obtained through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and observations. The research data lead to the identification of the following themes: generational change affects the survival of small-medium Malaysian Chinese family-owned businesses; the founder-owners' intention and desire for business to pass to the next generation give rise to the imperative of succession; the founder-owners' motive and goals, family context and the business nature would determine a large part to how the succession plans are carried out and the upbringing, expectation and obligations would determine how the next generations of children would view the prospect of taking over the family business. From this, a succession model that detailed an inclusive approach to succession planning process between the two generations is established.Research limitations/implicationsA small purposive sample is included, and it is recommended that a larger and more diverse sample be collected in future studies. This study follows a nuclear family structure of parents and children. If more Chinese family businesses are selected based on a wider set of family members such as uncles and cousins, the findings may differ.Social implicationsThis research study could also facilitate other Malaysian family businesses to rethink and refocus on the importance of undertaking an inclusive approach to succession planning and also help potential next-generation successors in understanding and working towards attaining the qualities that family firms look for in future leaders.Originality/valueThe researcher summarizes the study findings into a management succession model. An inclusive succession approach is needed to overcome these challenges and would enable sustainability, continuity and longevity of the family business. This would help the family business to understand that succession is not a single event but a process that needs to be planned together with the next-generation family members over a certain period of time.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 101-104
Author(s):  
Dahliana Kamener ◽  
Norasekin Ab. Rashid ◽  
Daniati Puttri

The issue of succession is very important because the successful succession leads to the sustainability of a family businesses (Sharma & Dave, 2013). Generally, the family businesses are difficult to flourish and even many have bankrupt. Some family businesses are bound on the first generation  and some have collapsed in the second generation.  Literature shows that just 30 percent of family businesses can be passed along to the second generation, and 70 percent fail after first generation step down because there are no preparation for succession and inability  of the next generation to control and run the company (Aronoff, (2004).  The study purposed to examine six hypotheses and the result showed the succession planning, non-family leadership, and decision making authority unsignificantly affect on the succession of the family business. Nevertheless, founder's influence, successor and strategic planning variable affect significantly to the success of family business succession at Padang city, West Sumatera.  


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitor Braga ◽  
Aldina Correia ◽  
Alexandra Braga ◽  
Sofia Lemos

Purpose The success of the family firms cannot be detached from the current paradigm where, within the present economic conditions, economic agents struggle to exploit the existing opportunities and need to take into account the risks associated to the international arena and the innovation processes. The internationalisation and innovation processes may trigger resistance within family business due to their relatively higher difficulty to take risks and to invest in industries outside the scope of their original core business. Innovation and internationalisation processes become relevant strategies for the family firms’ continuity and success. In line with such fact, the aim of this paper is to contribute with insights regarding the processes of innovation and internationalisation within family businesses. In particular, this paper aims to assess the propensity of such firms to apply such strategies, to identify the particular business behaviour and to assess the extent to which the particulars of family firms may constraint or lead to the implementation of innovation policies, and thus its internationalisation. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected through questionnaires within family business aiming to understand the scope and characteristics of internationalisation and innovation processes within these firms. The 154 replies from such data collection were analysed using different multivariate statistic procedures, although this paper is based on factorial and correlation analysis. Findings The analysis of the results shows that there is an association between the processes of innovation and internationalisation within family business. In addition, the results also suggest a typology of firms regarding their innovation and internationalisation strategies and motivations. Research limitations/implications The results of this paper are, to some extent, limited because they did not allow comparing the findings with data from non-family business. However, the authors’ aim was not to distinguish family firms, but rather to characterise them. Practical implications This paper expects to contribute with lessons for the management of family business and to raise awareness of the constraints faced by family business. It is important to highlight that family business performance may be affected by a lower propensity to risk-taking attitudes, by the lack of non-family management and to the necessity of separating the family and the business in the business dimensions that the family limits the business growth. Originality/value Although there is a significant amount of the literature devoted to explore family business, innovation and internationalisation studies, very few draw on the relationship between internationalisation and innovation processes within family business. This paper explores such a relationship within a particular business context – the family dynamics that strongly affect management and business development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katiuska Cabrera Suarez ◽  
Elena Rivo-López ◽  
Santiago Lago-Peñas ◽  
Santiago Lago-Peñas

Nowadays, family businesses, the predominant form of business worldwide, face an increasingly changing environment boosted by megatrends such as globalization, digitalization, artificial intelligence, climate change and sustainability. Along with this, are factors that play at a firm level such as stricter rules concerning transparency and compliance or the increasing importance of Corporate Social Responsibil- ity (CSR). Therefore, new strategies and organizational changes are necessary to allow for greater adaptation to the new context. This special issue provides insights on these questions from a variety of perspectives.                                           The work of Hernández-Linares and López-Fernán- dez expands the current thinking on this process of adaptation by exploring the combined effects of three strategic orientations (entrepreneurial, learning, and market orientations) on the family firm ́s performance. The authors provide interesting contributions in terms of highlighting the importance of strategic orientations for value creation in enterprise organizations. They also provide empirical evidence that the family char- acter of the firm determines the relationship between strategic orientations and business performance, and offer some results on the effect of market orientation on firm performance in family firms versus non-family firms.                                                                                                 Those differences in strategies are further ana- lysed within the setting of the business dimension in which financial and economic decisions are made. The contribution by Terrón-Ibáñez, Gómez-Miranda and Rodríguez-Ariza, discusses the influence of that di- mension in their performance, comparing family and non-family firms. This interesting analysis of financial performance provides useful results. The study showsthat, unlike non-family firms, there is an inverted U- shaped relationship between the size of family SMEs and the value of certain economic–financial indicators, such as the return on assets, operating margin and employee productivity. This means that although the increase in the dimension of the family organizations is positively related to its performance, there are lim- its from which the value of certain economic–financial indicators can be negatively affected.                                                                                                                                                           The next paper contributes to the discussion of the family business’s role in the private health sector. Reyes-Santías, Rivo-López and Villanueva-Villar, set out to identify the historical evolution of the family business in this sector, attempting to determine the variation and its contribution to the private health sector during the 1995-2010 period. The findings of this discussion provide family firms with an almost 60% survival level in this sector. Along with this, the au- thors provide some guidelines for future research con- cerning this higher degree of survival, why family firms are leading the concentration process taking place in the sector, as well as their strategies for super-spe- cialization in the services offered especially by family businesses in healthcare.         The effect of family ownership and the character- istics of the board of directors on the implementation level of Enterprise Risk Management is an important topic. The article by Otero-González, Rodríguez-Gil, Durán-Santomil and Tamayo-Herrera certainly adds to the discussion. In particular, their research shows that family businesses are less interested in implementing ERM, except when shareholders have greater control of the company and when professional investors are present in the company. Besides, the importance of a board of directors’ characteristics of in terms of risk taking is confirmed by observing that larger boards en- courage risk managers to be hired.                                                                                                                                                           The paper by Lorenzo-Gómez looks at the barriers to change that are specific to the characteristics of family business, considering both the barriers that af- fect the perception of the need to undertake changes and the availability of resources to face those chang- es, and the barriers to implementing these changes within already consolidated organizations, where new routines are created to replace the existing ones. Thefindings suggest that the factors affecting these barri- ers include the generation at the head of the family business; the influence of interest groups, particularly in terms of the duality between the company and the family; and the participation level of professionals from outside the family.                                                                                         The final contribution by Aragon-Amonarriz and Iturrioz-Landart offers an interesting discussion on how family-responsible ownership practices enhance social responsibility in small and medium family firms. Their results reveal the positive relationships between the elements of family-responsible ownership in terms of succession management, financial resource allocation, professionalism and social responsibility, and ultimate- ly with the socially responsible behaviour of family SMEs.                                                                                                                 The challenges surrounding family business owners and the nuances around strategic and organizational decision making are together an area ripe for future research. The editors look forward to seeing future de- velopments on these topics that pay special attention to the influence of family characteristics and dynamics on the strategic and organizational change of family firms, and that draw on both quantitative and quali- tative research methodologies for the wider develop- ment of the field. Acknowledgements. The papers published in this issue were presented at the “II Workshop of Family Business: Strategic and Organizational Change” at Ourense, Galicia, Spain, June, 13-14, 2019. The conference was organized by GEN group research (http:// infogen.webs.uvigo.es/) and the Chair of Family Business of the University of Vigo, and was sponsored by the AGEF (Galician Family Business Association), Inditex Group, IEF (Spanish Family Firm Institute), and with ECOBAS group as collaborator. Thanks for their invaluable support. We are also very thankful of all other participants at the conference.   Katiuska Cabrera Suárez,  University of Las Palmas Elena Rivo-López, co-director of the Chair of Family Business, University of Vigo Santiago Lago-Peñas, co-director of the Chair of Family Business, University of Vigo    


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atanas Nik Nikolov ◽  
Yuan Wen

PurposeThis paper brings together research on advertising, family business, and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm to examine performance differences between publicly traded US family vs non-family firms. The purpose of this paper is to understand the heterogeneity of family vs non-family firm advertising after such firms become publicly traded.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw on the RBV of the firm, as well as on extensive empirical literature in family business and advertising research to empirically examine the differences between family and non-family firms in terms of performance.FindingsUsing panel data from over 2,000 companies across ten years, this research demonstrates that family businesses have higher advertising intensity than competitors, and achieve higher performance returns on their advertising investments, relative to non-family competitors. The results suggest that the “familiness” of public family firms is an intangible resource that, when combined with their advertising investments, affords family businesses a relative advantage compared to non-family businesses.Research limitations/implicationsFamily involvement in publicly traded firms may contribute toward a richer resource endowment and result in creating synergistic effects between firm “familiness” and the public status of the firm. The paper contributes toward the RBV of the firm and the advertising literature. Limitations include the lack of qualitative data to ground the findings and potential moderating effects.Practical implicationsUnderstanding how family firms’ advertising spending influences their consequent performance provides new information to family firms’ owners and management, as well as investors. The authors suggest that the “familiness” of public family firms may provide a significant advantage over their non-family-owned competitors.Social implicationsThe implications for society include that the family firm as an organizational form does not need to be relegated to a second-class citizen status in the business world: indeed, combining family firms’ characteristics within a publicly traded platform may provide firm performance benefits which benefit the founding family and other stakeholders.Originality/valueThis study contributes by highlighting the important influence of family involvement on advertising investment in the public family firm, a topic which has received limited attention. Second, it also integrates public ownership in family firms with the family involvement–advertising–firm performance relationship. As such, it uncovers a new pathway through which the family effect is leveraged to increase firm performance. Third, this study also contributes to the advertising and resource building literatures by identifying advertising as an additional resource which magnifies the impact of the bundle of resources available to the public family firm. Fourth, the use of an extensive panel data set allows for a more complex empirical investigation of the inherently dynamic relationships in the data and thus provides a contribution to the empirical stream of research in family business.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenell Lynn-Senter Wittmer ◽  
Clinton Oliver Longenecker ◽  
Angie Jones

Purpose The current study explores the necessary leadership skills required for leadership succession in family businesses as well as best development activities for each skill. The current study provides suggestions for best practices in developing and utilizing peer groups as a leadership development method. Design/methodology/approach A needs assessment was conducted by surveying 150 family-business leaders. Leaders were asked, “What are your most pressing leadership development needs for your organization as you move toward succession? A follow-up question was then asked: “For each of these skills, what method would best help develop this skill for family business leaders?” The responses were content analyzed, placed into themes, and rank ordered. Findings High agreement amongst business leaders was found as eight leadership skills were cited by high percentages of family-business leaders. Leaders overwhelmingly reported peer developmental activities as being the best method for developing these skills. Originality/value Succession planning in family-businesses is critical as many family business fail to make it past the first or second generation. However, little research explores what specific leadership skills are necessary for optimal succession. As well, many leaders in public organizations seek individual methods of development, such as executive coaching, whereas family business leaders seek group activities to learn with/through their peers.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Asma AbdulRahim Chang ◽  
Muhammad Shujaat Mubarik ◽  
Navaz Naghavi

PurposeBy taking the theory of entrepreneurial legacy as the baseline, this study explores the various aspects of succession planning in indigenous family businesses especially the role of female family members in succession and conflicts in family businesses.Design/methodology/approachThe study is qualitative in nature and adopts narrative inquiry to explore the aspects of succession planning. In doing so, the study utilizes an in-depth interviewing technique with nine participants who run their family-owned firms which are mostly in their second or third generation for analysis.FindingsThe findings are concurrent with the literature that indicates a lack of strategic succession planning although ordinary or natural succession does occur in some firms. The study also reports a lack of consideration for female members in succession, daughters in particular, for traditional family firms (FFs) in contrast to entrepreneurial FFs.Research limitations/implicationsThe study has many implications for family-owned firms in Pakistan as they need to align their family business with the theory of entrepreneurial legacy and its three strategic activities in order to ensure the longevity of their business.Originality/valueExploring how succession planning takes place in family indigenous family businesses and what is the role of female family members in succession and conflicts in family businesses are original contributions of this study.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 281-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grisna Anggadwita ◽  
Werda Bagus Profityo ◽  
Dini Turipanam Alamanda ◽  
Anggraeni Permatasari

Purpose The family business is one of the business entities that contribute to the economy of a country. Succession in the family business occupies a strategic position, especially in maintaining the company’s sustainability. The Chinese family business has unique characteristics in maintaining and growing its business with the cultural values that underlie how their business. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the cultural values of Chinese ethnic and their implications in the succession process in small family businesses in Bandung, Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach This research uses a qualitative method with the in-depth interview method as a data collection technique. The sampling technique uses purposive sampling, while to test the validity of research data using a triangulation technique. A total of four small Chinese-owned family businesses participated as informants in this study. The study will identify the stage of succession process in the Chinese family business. Findings There are several stages identified in the succession planning of small Chinese-owned family business in Bandung which include succession antecedents, succession activities and desired outcomes. The results showed that small Chinese-owned family business in Bandung has not applied the rules and procedures in the succession process. Most of the Chinese family business in this research still holds Confucianism culture; they prioritize boys as business successors, who have a greater responsibility rather than successor with other gender. Practical implications Several implications are discussed. One of them is the Chinese family business holding cultural values in the process of family business succession. Originality/value This research is expected to provide theoretical and practical implications for academics and family companies with similar cases.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Weismeier-Sammer ◽  
Isabella R. Hatak

Kronmann Wholesale and Retail is an outstanding family business with more than 300 years of history. This teaching case tells the story of two cousins who follow their fathers into a business full of tradition. The case gives students the opportunity to gain insights into the complex succession process of family businesses, as well as the challenges with which successors are confronted in the course of family business succession.


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