The Relationship Among Intergenerational Conflict, Tacit Knowledge Transfer Of The Entrepreneur And Succession In Family Businesses

Since the reform and opening-up, Chinese family businesses are developing rapidly, which made an enormous contribution to solve employment problems and promote economic development. Over time, however, with the final curtain approaching of the first generation entrepreneurs, the succession has become a serious problem for Chinese family businesses. The family business is a complex system composed of family, firms and ownership, which is the unity of “family” and “business”, the succession of family businesses is as well as a process when wealth, resources, skills, ideas and spirit transfer from the entrepreneurs to the successors. Family businesses have a lot of tacit knowledge that brings unique competitive advantages due to the knowledge feature, while tacit knowledge is difficult to code or transfer. Entrepreneurs of family businesses, as the master of both family and firms, have most of the tacit knowledge. Therefore, the key of successful succession is the intergenerational transfer of tacit knowledge.In most contexts, tacit knowledge transfers between generations by way of exerting a subtle influence on the acceptors, due to its complexity and implicitness. In consequence, intergenerational interaction and transfer of tacit knowledge are bound together inextricably. Meanwhile the most obvious performance of Intergenerational interaction is the intergenerational conflict which is a common occurrence. Based on above, this study choose the intergenerational conflict as a totally new perspective, through the exploratory case study method, sum up the connotation of intergenerational conflict and the tacit knowledge of entrepreneurs, then this study points out that the intergenerational conflict is not always harmful for the succession, the beneficial conflict like task conflicts is the driving force for transfer of knowledge. Integrity & curiousness, relationship network of entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship transfer from the entrepreneurs to the successors with the intergenerational conflict taking place and being bridged. The entrepreneur and the successor should show respect and trust to each other, and try to enhance communication on issues. That is helpful to reduce the harmful conflicts and promote the expression of beneficial conflicts,thus ensure the progress of family business succession going successfully and smoothly.