A Study Of The Family Business Founders' Succession Behavior In Chinese Context

As a historic form of organization, the family business occupies an irreplaceable role in China's national economy. Since the reform and opening up policy has been implemented, China's first batch of the founder of the family business gradually grew old. There has been a peak of family business succession in China. Family business being successfully passed on, not only influences the sustainable development of family business itself, but also has a major impact on China's private economy. The founders are the core both in enterprise and in family, so they play a leading role in the succession process. The founders'behavior directly affects the succession. It is necessary for us to study succession behavior of the founder.The main content of this study is to probe what behavior has founder done and their formation mechanism.. Firstly, it introduced the research background, raised questions, outlined the research content, and explained the technical route and innovation of this study. Secondly, we combed and summarized the literature on family business succession and contextualized research. We followed qualitative research methods and coded the behavior, and we simplified the behaviors. Through the inductive analysis, we found behavioral characteristics. On this basis, this study used a single case study approach with New Hope Group being sample cases, the behaviors of Mr. Liu Yonghao being the research object, following the framework of "situation - cognitive - behavior", to probe the situational factors and get the formation mechanism.. Finally, the results and conclusions are summarized.This study showed that the behaviors include external education behavior, words and deeds behavior and the gradual retirement behavior. Through the story line analysis, the behavior has logical sequence. Totally, the behaviors are long-term, rigor, progressive and interactive. The political context and the economic context in which the founders grew, determined the acquired cognition of the founders, leading to behaviors of external education, words and deeds. The differences in rank structure and Confucian culture are the unique social situations of China. They determined the intrinsic cognition of founder, resulting in a gradual retirement of the founder of succession behavior.