Research On The Impact Of Intergenerational Succession On Family Business Performance

Since the reform and opening up,family business has become an important form of enterprise organization in China promoting the steady growth of the national economy.In recent years,the founders of family businesses have been in their nearly sixties.Intergenerational succession related to the sustainable development of family business is imminent.As the core figures of family businesses,successors' social capital can bring competitive advantages.Utilizing the unique resource of successors'social capital can help family business pass through the succession period smoothly.This paper takes 480 A-share listed family firms as the research object,of which 184 are inherited family firms.This paper chooses the balanced panel data as the sample from 2014 to 2016 to study the impact of succession on family firm performance and the moderating role of successors' social capital.The succession is divided into two stages:participation management and takeover management from the process perspective.Moreover,the study divides successors' social capital into three indicators:vertical network of entrepreneurs,horizontal network of entrepreneurs and social network of entrepreneurs.The results show that:participation management is positively related to business performance;there is a negative correlation between takeover management and business performance;vertical network can't moderate the relationship between succession and performance positively;horizontal network and social network have positive moderating roles in the relationship between them.This study has the following theoretical contributions:Firstly,it pays attention to the transfer of management power in the succession of family business.According to the degree of involvement of the management power,the intergenerational succession is divided into two stages,which improves the theory of intergenerational succession.Secondly,it considers the influence of hidden factors on the intergenerational succession and quantifies the social capital of successors,which provides theoretical guidance for the successful succession of family business.