Succession in Family Businesses

Succession is inevitable and vital for the longevity of family businesses. But what do we know about succession in family businesses and where do we go from here? How does the interaction of family and business impact on succession? And which roles play identity and family member identification during the succession process?

This book expands our knowledge on succession and prepares the grounds for a holistic view of succession in family businesses. Its first contribution is a systematic, replicable, and scientific review and consolidation of the theoretical and empirical literature on succession of the last 18 years into a transparent, logical, and in-depth framework. Furthermore, by analyzing the business and the family dimension in the context of succession, this book aims at detecting different succession patterns in family businesses and analyzes which factors influence the nature of successful succession processes. Besides its scientific contribution, this book helps family businesses and business families to better understand mechanisms happening during succession and enables them to identify and to understand their individual succession pattern.

The findings of this book are based on a qualitative study conducted in the German Wine Industry. The sample consists of 21 family-owned and -managed German wineries, being, on average, in their 11th generation of existence. 37 semi-structured interviews held with both generations of one family if possible, translated into 695 pages of raw data. This data was coded and analyzed following a grounded theory approach.