Sustaining the Family Business: How Family Enterprises Successfully Complete Intergenerational Succession

Author: Ivan Lansberg (China) Xu Yulin Fu Yahe
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Finding a suitable successor for a beloved founder or CEO is often one of the most challenging tasks a company faces; for family businesses, completing this task presents even greater challenges. Surprisingly, from small family grocery stores to multinational corporations that dominate the global business landscape, few family businesses successfully pass on to the next generation, and even fewer manage to smoothly transfer their legacy to the third generation. The author of this book, Ivan Lansberg, is an organizational psychologist who grew up in a business family. In this book, he reveals the reasons behind this high failure rate and proposes the conditions under which family businesses can successfully achieve generational succession. Lansberg believes that family businesses are highly privatized, and due to the neglect of some deep psychological factors, many detailed succession plans are inevitably doomed to fail. He emphasizes that the family must have a "shared dream," a concept somewhat similar to a unique mission. Because Lansberg offers suggestions on how to manage the succession process, how to establish systematic selection procedures, and how to effectively utilize the board of directors during the succession process, it provides a comprehensive understanding of the process. He is also an analyst of the various choices in the inheritance process. The multiple choices discussed here include everything from the simplest transfer from one parent to a designated heir, to more complex transitions from a sibling partnership team to a family partnership team. Based on numerous case studies from family businesses in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, this book offers a comprehensive and profound insight into the intricate succession process of family businesses. Succession planning is a timeless mission for family businesses. This book is a guide that provides detailed solutions to the problems family businesses encounter at every stage of their development.