Family Business Succession Planning into the Second Generation

Kechli, Wael (2023) Family Business Succession Planning into the Second Generation. Doctor of Business Administration thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

The sustainability of businesses depends on the ability to create the right succession path that will guide the conduct of executives both present and future. In most firms that are held by shares, the shareholder model makes it possible to elect successors who lead and run affairs to achieve continuity. No such arrangements exist for family businesses and so having a succession plan is of primary importance to such businesses if they want to ensure continuity and sustainability of their operations. Decades of research point to the fact that a good number of family businesses fail to continue to exist after the first-generation owners die. This is due to poor succession planning. The study was conducted with the purpose of facilitating the development of an action plan for a family business to undertake a succession plan. I adopted the case study research strategy. As part of the case study strategy, the company used is SPC, a family business owned by my father, where I was informally managing the business without any formal and clear succession plan. An action research data collection method was used to pursue the purpose of the study. As part of the action research, series of interviews were conducted among with my father, my sister, my brother, and two employees of the family business. There were two phases of the interview. The first phase was the pre-intervention phase. At the pre-intervention phase, the goal behind the interviews was to identify, situate and contextualize the problem that I had perceived due to my personal involvement in the family business. Results from the pre-intervention interviews confirmed the problem and proved that the depth of the problem was worrying and one that needed immediate solution. Most members were also not ready to support a succession plan because they felt there were several intra-family relationship issues that would negatively affect a successful succession plan. The intervention was introduced after the pre-intervention interviews, leading to the second and third interviews at the post-intervention stage. The intervention was in the form of a workshop aimed at equipping members with knowledge about succession planning and brainstorming with them on the need to have a succession plan at SPC. After the post-intervention interview, it was found the knowledge of members about succession planning had increased and they had collectively proposed ways of solving their differences. They were therefore now more willing to design and roll out an action plan of their own. Contributions made from this study are specific to SPC but future researchers can build on it to extend the applicability of its findings to the larger context of family businesses in the country.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctor of Business Administration)
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Management
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	16 Feb 2023 15:02
Last Modified:	25 Aug 2023 12:04
DOI:	10.17638/03166989
Supervisors:	Ali, Shaukat
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3166989