Objective: The aim of this article is to identify whether there are similarities or differences between family and non-family firms in terms of the factors which contribute to business success. More specifically, comparison analyses were designed to isolate possible variations related to an...

Family-owned businesses are the engine that drives the US economy. A recent study found that 77% of new businesses established are family-owned (Åsa Björnberg, 2016). In 2016 there were over 30 million small businesses in the US, of which approximately 20%, or 6 million, were family-owned...

The problems associated with measuring success in small businesses are primarily caused by a lack of comparable data due to the ambiguity of "success" and by subjective biases. Success evaluation is dominated by the estimates of business owners, who tend to overestimate overall success and...

Sharma et al. (2001) developed a model of satisfaction with the succession process in family firms by applying the stakeholder theory. This model suggests that satisfaction from the succession process is enhanced by factors such as the incumbent's willingness to step aside, the successor's...

The Kesner and Sebora article on executivesuccession, Toward an integrative model of effective FOB succession, isevaluated as to its research on family firm succession issues. The articlesuggests that developing testing theory is very much like assembling a jigsawpuzzle. There are two parts to...

Identifying appropriate criteria for evaluatingsuccess is acommon problem in the analysis of small family businesses.Definitions and measurement of success are ambiguous due to subjective biasesand a variety of personal goals and company objectives; definitions andmeasurements are not comparable...

This explorative study sees the sights of the succession process and its achievement as part of family business long-term survival. This represents a huge challenge considering that only three of ten companies can reach second generation and also one of these ten companies will reach third...

We review and analyze previous literature on succession in family firms from an entrepreneurial process perspective. Through a three-step cluster analysis of 117 published articles on succession in family firms published between 1974 and 2010, we find several themes within which succession can...

The often long-lasting process of intrafamily business succession involves contracts for management and ownership transfer that unfold in a complex series of stages. The older and larger a family business, the more heterogeneous the involved family members' interactions and interests can become....