Homes And Businesses Under The Double Perspective Of Family Business Heritage Studies And International Comparisons

As one of the most ancient organizational forms, family firms play an important role in the world. In China, private economy has been a great part of socialist market economy and taken a significant place, after 30 years of Chinese economic reform. Family organization is the most obvious characteristic of private firms. So the development of family firms has an outstanding contribution to our country.Nowadays, the first few of family firms are facing the problem of family succession. But the old proverb about family firms not able to pass to the third generation concludes the weird development circle of family firms. Therefore, it has a theoretical and practical significance to analyze family succession. This article will focus on the family succession from the vertical and horizontal aspects, by adopting both comparative method and quantitative method.Firstly, by comparing social culture and environment for family firms' development in different countries, this article analyzes effect factors of family succession. Besides, we choose five typical family firms from America, Japan and China, by analyzing and comparing their succession systematically, and then discuss their characteristics and revelations to family firms in China.Secondly, recent research about family firms adopts more qualitative analysis and less quantitative analysis, especially lacking family variable in the quantitative research about family succession. Considering the exclusive family characteristic of family firm, this article tries to put family structures into the succession model of family firms and considers its effectiveness.By comparing the typical family firms in different countries and analyzing 90 samples of listed family firms in China, this article concludes that family culture has a subconscious influence on family succession. And whether the property is clear influences the way of family firms controlling on firm ownership. The possibility of family firms'succession rises with the improvement of family governance. Besides, family structures especially the gender of children, significantly impact on family succession. In the short term, family succession has no effect on variation of firm performance,.while in the long term, family firms prefer non-family succession, which do influence the variation of firm performance.Finally, according to the comparison in different family firms and the quantitative analysis, this article gives some advice on family succession from the aspects of property reform, the environment for family firms'development and preparation for succession.