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This study investigated the succession process in small and medium family farms as two distinct but related processes of management transfer and ownership transfer. Past studies focused on the broad subject of succession, without dissecting succession into the components that it contains. Furthermore, this study aimed to evaluate which business, family and owner characteristics were significant in the progress of each process toward the actual transfer of management and ownership.

Telephone interviews were conducted to gather information from rural family businesses in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. A bivariate ordered probit regression was utilized to model the processes of management and ownership transfer as separate but related processes. Both management transfer and ownership transfer were modeled utilizing three distinct stages of transfer.

Business and owner characteristics were significant to both management and ownership transfer, whereas family characteristics only influenced ownership transfer. Farm family businesses that discussed goals, identified a successor and were educated on how to start the transfer process were more likely to have made progress in both management and ownership transfer.

The authors contribute empirically to the literature by modeling the components of the succession process, management transfer and ownership transfer, as separate but interrelated processes. The authors specifically investigate which business, owner and family characteristics influence the progression of management and ownership transfer in farm family businesses.

Academic research on the transgenerational performance differences among family firms in Bangladesh is still in its infancy. This paper delves into this issue to answer whether the financial performance of family firms run by second-generation family members is different from their predecessors and nonfamily firms.

The study employs panel data analysis that attempts to conceptualize the performance difference, quantified in terms of profitability and return, between founder- and second-generation-run public companies in Bangladesh. Moreover, cross-sectional regressions extend the research paradigm to investigate and validate whether heir-controlled family firms perform differently than nonfamily firms or firms that are yet to experience ownership succession within a family.

The study indicates that family firms perform better when founding family members are in control compared to second-generation-run family firms. Moreover, further analysis suggests that heir-controlled family firms do not show a significant difference in performance compared to firms that never had a family succession in its managerial positions. The implications are that there could be nonfinancial family-centric motivations for family business ownership transition.

Family succession of firm ownership is venerated without necessarily a validation of its financial merit. In Bangladesh, this is too often a de facto transfer of leadership within family firms. This study can act as a reference point to understand that family succession of firm ownership in Bangladesh may not necessarily be in the best financial interest of a firm.

The literature on family firms propounds a plethora of vacillating conclusions and opinions. This paper adds this body of empirical literature into an exercise of formal logic. Such an empirical investigation into the financial performance of Bangladeshi family firms, visualized through the lens of leadership transfer to a second-generation family member, has not been extensively studied in contemporary literature.

The purpose of this paper is to establish whether succession problems in family businesses contribute to more modest growth aspirations compared to family businesses where succession solutions are gained. It aims to focus especially on transition countries, where studies on this topic are very rare.

The main data source for the study was a telephone survey of 350 small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Slovenia. To obtain population estimates, 95 percent confidence intervals were calculated. To test the differences in the case of two independent samples, the t‐test and χ²‐test were used. The general criterion for accepting the hypothesis that differences exist was the statistical signification at the 5 percent level (p< 0.05; two‐tailed).

The research shows that a high proportion of family enterprises in Slovenia are going to face the problem of succession in the near future. Research results also suggest that anticipation of an increase in the number of new jobs is higher, on average, among entrepreneurs in family enterprises that have gained succession solutions, compared to those that have not.

It is very important for transition countries to continue with research and to regularly start collecting data on succession and start raising the awareness of family business owners about the importance of managers preparing succession on time. An extension of the research is also to establish whether, and to what extent, growth aspirations turn into the actual growth of ventures.

This is one of the first researches on the impact of unsolved succession problems on entrepreneurs' ambitions to grow their business in transition countries in general, with particular focus on the case of Slovenia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between family succession, professionalization and internationalization in family businesses within the Brazilian context.

The paper presents a multiple-case study method with three Brazilian family businesses that have at least two generations of the owning family involved in the business and an international presence of at least three years. In-depth interviews and secondary data were undertaken with family and non-family members of each case.

The authors' results show that a family business can boost its internationalization by introducing both succession planning and professionalization on international activities. As family members tend to be more risk-averse and focused on keeping the family business within the family, professionalization is a way of improving the firm's ability to expand internationally. This process tends to lead to lower performance by the firm for the first few months or the first year after the investment, but afterward, international performance tends to grow exponentially.

Only a few studies have been concerned on the relationship of these three dimensions. Thus, the research takes into account that professionalization and succession lead family businesses to improve their internationalization strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse in-depth how family owners develop autonomy through ownership for family members within the family, the family within the business and the business within its context.

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

A business-owning family has to balance paradoxical choices such as safety or loss of attachments; a stable notion of self or grasping new opportunity; own drive or dependency on others. These constituted the micro-dynamics of autonomy. The macro-outcome of negotiating autonomy was strategy formations such as succession, cluster ownership, stewardship, new business models.

The research findings enable a more differentiated analysis in case studies and qualitative research and with this theory development on family owner motivation.

It will give insight for practitioners, advisors and family owners, on the complexity of maintaining family health, family member commitment and emotional issues when developing ownership strategies.

The paper offers a model over the complexity of autonomy, a main drive for entrepreneurship within our economy. It shows the complexity of gender and life stage choices.

The paper offers a model over the complexity of autonomy, regarded as the main drive for entrepreneurship and family ownership. It shows how this process is fundamental for understanding how the family develops its ownership.

Family businesses account for 70% of businesses in Australia, and employ half of Australia's workforce (ASBFEO, n.d). Although they form an integral part of Australian economy and society, the experience of COVID-19 has undoubtedly created both change and challenges for family businesses. Are Australian family businesses ready to manage this change and cope with these challenges? In this chapter we explore this question by discussing the “state-of-the-art” about family businesses in Australia, and present research directions to develop knowledge about the readiness of Australian family businesses to not only flourish but to be sustainable in the post COVID-19 world.

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the understanding of family business succession as organizational knowledge creation process.

The paper is built on organizational knowledge creation theory and reviews literature on family business succession. Four modes of knowledge conversion are followed to identify knowledge creation activities contributing to family business's knowledge base and to develop propositions.

Successful realization of succession depends not only on “traditional” knowledge creation activities of socialization and internalization, but as well as on active involvement of successor(s) in many aspects of business functioning. This contributes not only to widening successor(s) knowledge base but as well as to the firm's tacit and explicit knowledge triggering a new spiral of knowledge.

The paper limits the research on leadership succession as one of the most challenging tasks in family business's life cycle. Moreover, research findings have implications for small- and medium-sized family businesses due to the strong preference of keeping the leadership within a family.

Propositions developed provide useful cognitions to professionals and stakeholders involved in succession process. If they understand the complexity of knowledge creation process, they can stand a better chance of improving the process of successor(s)’ development and leadership transfer in such a way that family business will have better chance to survive and progress after the transition.

The research provides a comprehensive framework of knowledge creation activities during succession thus indicating the requisitely holistic approach to succession from organizational knowledge creation perspective. The study contributes to the organizational knowledge creation theory and the succession theory.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how founders of family-controlled Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) under bounded rationality implement internal governance mechanisms that may affect the long-term performance once the founder retires. These actions create a hurdle for successors to follow the founder’s success.

The authors collected data on secondary sources of 36 family and 22 professionally managed REITs from 1999 to 2012 that resulted in an unbalanced panel data of 726 REIT-year observations. The authors use a series of multi-variate analyses to test the hypotheses.

The findings confirm that founders of family-controlled REITs focus more on developing internal governance mechanisms to satisfy their personal goals. Long-term performance is negatively affected once the successor takes over especially when the successor is a family member.

The authors have data limitations about family involvement. The authors suggest future avenues of investigation such as combining perceptual with archival data.

The authors expect that REIT managers and families can use the findings to develop viable and sustainable governance practices. Especially, being a publicly traded REIT implies to conform to the market expectations so there is a need to balance socio emotional wealth preservation with financial goals.

The authors frame the paper on transaction cost economics and contribute to the literature by stating that the dominance of founders of family-controlled REITs are more aligned to keep the business under family control once the founder retires.

A second-generation, multi-billion-dollar Asian family business, run for decades by six brothers, faces issues of ownership, family employment, management, leadership, governance, and succession as it transitions to the third generation of siblings and cousins.

To examine ownership and leadership succession strategies and the preparation for next-generation leadership of a family business; study the relationship between business governance and family ownership; illustrate the dilemma of concentrated family ownership control vs. dispersed family ownership; and explore stewardship leadership as a burden and as an opportunity challenging the next-generation leader.

Drawing on the principal-principal conflict and identity literatures, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the Agency Problem Type II-bis in the context of family business. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that the size of the family owner group is related to firm growth and that this relationship is moderated by the extent to which the family identifies with the firm.

The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 265 medium and large German family firms (FFs) via moderated hierarchical regression analysis.

The main findings suggest that business family identity moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship between the size of the family owner group and firm growth in such a way that FFs with medium-sized family owner groups and high levels of business family identity reach higher firm growth.

In the context of FFs fully owned by one family, family owners might have different strategic preferences, goals, and identities, thus potentially making them subject to the conflict that could arise among the different family owners in relation to growth expectations. Recognizing this problem could help family owners find potential solutions to ensure the well-being of both the family and the business.

The combination of family ownership structure and family ownership dynamics affects firm growth. Challenging the homogeneity of the family owner group, the authors highlight the role of Agency Problem Type II-bis in hindering growth of FFs. A finer-grained view of principal-principal conflicts in FFs is thus discussed.