Effects of Incumbent’s Commitment in Family Businesses on Succession Planning

Abstract

As many of the researchers agree succession planning is one of the key factors on the sustainability and survival of family businesses over generations. Nevertheless, majority of the family businesses all over the world does not consider succession planning as it is required. This situation has multiple reasons. One of the most mentioned reason is that the leaders of the family businesses are not willing to start the transfer process as they are supposed to do. In this regard, the target of this research is to analyse the reasons behind leaders’ intentions for succession planning under the construct of organizational commitment perspective. When it comes to the family business literature review it is well known that leader’s commitment to the family business impacts the succession planning. Particularly, as affective and continuance commitment has been perceived as effecting succession planning negatively, normative commitment has positive effects on succession planning.