Women as Successors in Family Businesses – Employee’s Perception
Abstract: To ensure business continuity, family businesses (FBs) need to have succession plans and successor selection processes on time. Due to the importance of this process, the succession debate is one of the most researched areas in FB literature. However, studies have primarily focused on incumbent or successor points of view. The process of successor selection involves choosing a new leader by the family business owner or members, independently of third-party approval. Even though the literature suggests employees' perception, acceptance, participation, and influence are significant in ensuring a smooth leadership transition, employee perception has been examined in the business literature, and theories offer explanations for the preferences of employees, mainly aimed at explaining the preferences of employees in terms of gender. This article makes a unique contribution to the FB literature by extending the gender preferences developed in the management and physiological literature to gender and other preferences in FBs. The study aims to demonstrate the importance of kinship, gender, educational background, and professional experience of successors and employees in the acceptance and smooth transition of female successors within family businesses. The research investigates these factors to understand how they contribute to the dynamics of leadership succession and the facilitation of a supportive environment for women taking on leadership roles in a family business context. This dual-focused study examines the relative impact of these changes among fifty-two family business employees in nine countries, providing insights into successor leadership development and factors affecting the acceptance of successor women and their preference for family businesses.
Author(s): Dr Özlem Özdemir, Dr Sree Lekshmi Sreekumaran Nair & Prof Jonathan Liu
Date Published: December 13 2024
Depositing User: Basiratu Kolawole
Keywords: Succession, Family Business, Employee perception & Women entrepreneurship
Subject(s): Business
Type of publication: Journal Paper
Place of publication: United Kingdom
Pages: 1-29