Research On The Determinants And Decision For Timing Of Passing The Baton In Chinese Listed Family Businesses

Family enterprises play an important role in the whole world economy, so issues about family business are always one of major fields academic researched. Executive succession confronts virtually all viable organizations, succession is something that forced upon an organization, and the leadership transfer is complicated challenge for family business, therefore keeping the transfer smoothly arouse more and more attention in academic circles.Researchers widely believe that making the continuity in family firms, ensuring the transfer effectively greatly depend on a succession play. Although the play includes successor and time selection, the research about successor is plentiful, and the study about timing is a completely new subject not only for businesses, but also for academics.The administrators in Chinese family businesses, who grow up with the reform and open since 1980s, mostly are 50-60, and begin to retire. Because the phase of wealth and power transfer is just also the fragile one for businesses, the entrepreneurs have to consider the optimal time for transfer. The study about the succession timing is little all around the world, and many intergenerational transfers in family businesses are underway unconsciously. It is demand to establish a theory and practice succession system, which is suit to the conditions of China, to guide the transfer.Based on the operation environments of Chinese family listed companies, applying data from 1992 to 2004 which came from Shanghai and Shenzhen securities exchange, the thesis seizes on the gap in that research field, and make an issue of timing of passing the baton with the integration of theory and empirical method.In order to test whether the succession timing is efficient in China, the relationship between the timing and business performance in family enterprises has been studied first. The research reveals that there does exist timing issue in...