Making family business succession into family business success. The influence of soft issue-focused external advice on the bottlenecks in family business successions
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2019-01-28
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en
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In the life cycle of a family enterprise, succession forms one of the most important episodes and is thus a hurdle that warrants research, as the majority of family businesses do not survive the first succession. To take this hurdle, traditionally self-minded family enterprises nowadays increasingly turn to advisors. Unique to family businesses are the so-called ‘soft issues’,regarding topics as emotional attachment to the firm and intrafamilial relations which might harm the succession process if not properly addressed. Traditional family business advisors, often accountants, focus on hard issues and do not possess the skillsets required to address the important soft issues. This research intends to clarify the influence of advisory focus on soft issues during family business leadership transitions. This is achieved by 11 in-depth qualitative interviews with soft issue-focused advisors, incumbents and successors. The results describe certain roles and practices that soft issue-focused advisors employ to overcome the identified soft issue related bottlenecks which hinder a successful succession process. It suggests that the involvement of a soft issue-focused advisor increases the chance of a successful succession process.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen