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Strategic plurality in intergenerational hand-over: Incubation and succession strategies in family ownership

Gry Osnes (Succession Consult Ltd, London, UK)
Liv Hök (Psykoterapi, Handledning, Konsultation, Stockholm, Sweden)
Olive Yanli Hou (China Family Business Magazine, London, UK)
Mona Haug (Coaching Training Mentoring, Vaihingen, Germany)
Victoria Grady (George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA)
James D. Grady (Pivot Point Business Solutions, Opelika, Alabama, USA)

Journal of Family Business Management

ISSN: 2043-6238

Article publication date: 23 November 2018

Issue publication date: 16 May 2019

1018

Abstract

Purpose

With strategy-as-practice theory the authors explore successful business-owning families hand-over of roles to the next generation. The authors argue for the usefulness of strategy-as-practice theory in exploring the complexity and plurality of best practices in intergenerational hand-over. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-cultural in-depth case study with best practice cases from China, Germany, Sweden, England, Tanzania, Israel and the USA, based on in-depth interviews of family members and non-family employees.

Findings

The authors identified three different succession patterns: a “monolithic practice,” a distributed leadership hand-over, and active ownership with a non-family managing director/CEO. Two other types of hand-over practices were categorized as incubator patterns that formed a part of, or replaced, what we traditionally see as a hand-over of roles. Families would switch between these practices.

Research limitations/implications

Surprisingly, a monolithic succession practice (a one-company-one-leadership role) was rarely used. Quantitative and qualitative research should consider, as should advisors to family owners and family businesses, the plurality of succession practices. Education should explore a variation of succession and how the dynamic of gender influences the process.

Practical implications

Giving practitioners, such as research and practitioner, an overview of strategic options so as to explore these in a client or research case.

Social implications

Adding the notions that the family is an incubator for new entrepreneurship makes it possible to show how not only sector or public policy generate new ventures. That family as source of entrepreneurship has been well established in the field but it mainstream policy thinking the family is not seen as such a source.

Originality/value

The paper offers an integrative model of the complexity of hand-over practices of ownership and leadership roles. It shows how these practices are fundamental for understanding how a family’s ownership and their leadership of businesses and new entrepreneurship develops.

Keywords

Citation

Osnes, G., Hök, L., Yanli Hou, O., Haug, M., Grady, V. and Grady, J.D. (2019), "Strategic plurality in intergenerational hand-over: Incubation and succession strategies in family ownership", Journal of Family Business Management, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 149-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFBM-06-2018-0018

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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