The aim of this research was to ascertain the implications and the impact that the succession process would have on the organisational culture of family businesses. In an attempt to answer this, the researcher asked three questions surrounding the succession process and its relationship with organisational culture. The questions related to the extent to which the family business was prepared for change in management; what changes occurred before, during, and immediately after the succession process, and what results these changes had on the organisational culture. Family businesses account for a large proportion of the national and global market activities, and so it is imperative that attention be paid to any problems they may experience. As it is, family businesses have difficulty in successions, with roughly one third of first generation family businesses surviving the succession process. It is the aim of this research to explore the contribution organisational culture has in the large failure rate of succession with family businesses. When successors enter into the organisation, they bring with them different perspectives on managerial issues suggesting that a change in leadership style will occur as a result of a succession. In answering the research questions, the researcher embarked on a two-phase research methodology utilising a quantitative and qualitative process. This triangulation process incorporates a self-administrated survey questionnaire, and six in-depth interviews. The survey questionnaire and interview schedules were structured using a combination of elements obtained from Harris's (1998) and Levinson's (1972). The survey data was analysed using various statistical methods, predominantly a Factor Analysis, where as Abstract iii the interviews were analysed using a theme retrieval process. The two processes were combined to yield the results. The findings of the research conclude that through the introduction of the successor in the change process, a new leadership style is introduced into the business. The new leader changes policies, practices and procedures, which are related to organisational climate and are the tangible aspects of organisational culture. Altering the climate essentially alters the culture, which may result in anxiety within the organisation and lead to tension. If these issues are not addressed, they may result in the demise of family businesses.

Literature suggests that a small number of family businesses are able to make the transition from the founder to other family members with a common reason cited being the lack of planning. This study aims to build understanding of leadership succession in family businesses by focusing on the influence of a founder's family business value set on the succession planning process in Black family-owned businesses. Using the Strauss and Corbin (1990) grounded theory method, this study develops a theory of succession planning of Black familyowned businesses labelled Passing the Spear which is comprised of three stages based on an analysis of 21 qualitative interviews. The Spear was an analogy used to represent both the values of the founder and the family business, thus in Passing the Spear, founders where essentially performing a dual transfer of their values and leadership to the successor. The implementation of the process Passing the Spear was influenced by the family business value set of the founder, which in this study, were labelled as Traditional, Progressive, and Transitional. These value sets were distinguished by their behaviour regarding their choice of successor where founders with a traditional value set exhibited gatekeeping behaviour, while the behaviour of founders with a progressive value set was labelled navigating, and finally, founders with a transitional value set demonstrated behaviour labelled exploring. Furthermore, it was found that after the successor had been chosen, founders appeared to follow a generic succession planning process, however, the ease and timing of implementation was influenced by the family business context, evidence of being proactive and the degree of family business resilience. The process of Passing the Spear comprised of three stages of (a) Showing the spear where the founder's focus is on the induction and socialization of the successor using the strategies of bringing the successor into the family business and managing the family-business interface using relationships; (b) Explaining the spear entailed founders using the strategies of sharing knowledge and teaching the successors about the family business; and ( c) Sharing the spear was where founders focused on empowering the successors by implementing strategies of sharing responsibilities and learning from the successor.The process provides insights into the influence of family business values on the succession planning process and can be useful for founders of Black family-owned businesses in planning for succession in their businesses. In addition, the study provides another perspective of succession planning and offers a contribution to the literature for understanding succession in Black family-owned businesses.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Family businesses are increasing in the western societies. They will continue to play an important role in most economies. There is a growing interest among young people to get involved in family businesses. It is therefore important that issues and factors influencing the behaviour of family businesses be highlighted and understood by those interested in family businesses. This study investigates the dynamics in family businesses and concludes on the issues of remuneration, conflict and succession. The family business is a composition of two complex systems, family and business, with at its lead an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are the "green barets" of our economy, they are the people with guts, who survive on a mixture of unwarranted confidence and blind hope. This study focused on the issues of remuneration, conflict and succession as described in literature. Founders/managers should be sensitive to these issues and the management thereof. The emotions involved in family businesses make them unique compared to other businesses. Businesses that fail to address these issues will experience more problems than businesses which proactively deal with the issues. The results of this research indicate that family business globally experience similar dynamics. It is suggested that founders/managers make an effort to uncover the issues threatening the health of their business and address them. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Familie ondememings is aan die toeneem in die westerse gemeenskappe. Dit het in die verlede en sal soveel te meer in die toekoms 'n belangrike rol vertolk in meeste ekonomië. Daar is 'n toenemende belangstelling onder jong entrepreneurs in familie besighede. Dit is dus belangrik dat die realiteite en faktore wat in familie besighede teenwoordig is, onder entrepreneurs se aandag gebring word sodat hulle nie oningelig is nie. Hierdie studie het juis ten doel om die sake rakende konflik, vergoeding en opvolging na te vors. Familie besighede is die samevoeging van twee komplekse sisteme naamlik familie en besigheid, met 'n entrepeneur aan die stuur van hierdie kombinasie. Entrepreneurs word beskou as die baanbrekers van die ekonomie, hulle beskik oor deursettingsvermoë, geloof en hoop. Hierdie tesis beskou vergoeding, konflik en opvolging vanuit 'n literatuur oogpunt. Dit is van kardinale belang dat stigters/bestuurders van familie besighede sensitief is vir hierdie aspekte en dit bestuur. Die uniekheid van familie besighede stem van die emosies daarbinne af. Besighede wat versuim om aandag aan hierdie dinamika binne familie besighede te gee, kan meer algemene probleme verwag as die besighede wat wel proaktief optree. Hierdie studie kom tot die gevolgtrekking dat familie besighede oor die wêreld heen soortgelyke probleme ervaar. Daar word voorgestel dat eienaars/stigters/bestuurders daadwerklik aandag gee aan die faktore en realiteite wat die gesondheid van familie besighede bedreig.

published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Despite important advances in family business research over the past decade, the effects of family ownership and control on firm performance and strategy remain equivocal. First, is family involvement beneficial or costly to the firm? Leading management and family business research theories proffer compelling arguments, but none have been able to present unassailable theoretical support for any one particular side. Second, how do family firms make capital structure decisions? Although there are widely-accepted theories of capital structure policy in the corporate finance literature, they have limited power in explaining financial decision making in family firms. Furthermore, empirical studies on both the performance and capital structure policy of family firms have generated mixed results. This divergence in theory and empirical evidence suggests that earlier studies have not been able to consider other critical factors that drive value creation and strategy formulation in family businesses. This dissertation addresses these gaps in the literature with two studies that are derived from the question of how the performance and behavior of “Overseas Chinese” family firms are influenced by Confucian values and practices. In the first study, I developed a theoretical framework based on social capital theory which posits that long-term orientation (LTO) acts as a mediator in the relationship between family ownership and control (FOC) and firm performance. In addition, I hypothesized that Confucian characteristics, such as filial piety (FIL), traditionalism (TRA), and guanxi (GUA), act as moderators in the model. In the second study, I built a framework using the theory of planned behavior, which explains how FOC and Confucian values jointly affect the firm’s capital structure decisions by influencing the decision maker’s beliefs and attitude toward debt, by fostering societal pressures regarding the use of debt, and by creating perceived behavioral controls in terms of risk exposure, family control, and the cost of debt. According to this framework, Confucian values moderate the relationship between FOC and financial leverage by reinforcing the family firm’s intention not to borrow. Using data from a sample of small- and medium-sized firms in the Philippines and the partial least squares structural equation modeling methodology (PLS-SEM), analysis reveals that LTO partly explains the positive influence of FOC on firm performance, and that TRA enhances the positive relationship between FOC and LTO. In the second study, the results suggest that firms which have a high degree of FOC borrow less. In addition, at high degrees of FIL, firms with a lower FOC have a lower financial leverage while firms with a higher level of FOC have a higher financial leverage. This dissertation contributes significantly to the family business management and family firm finance literature and the management literature in general. First, the social capital framework developed in the first study identifies specific circumstances in which family ownership and control can enhance firm value. Specifically, family firms are able to achieve better performance by promoting LTO in the organization, and cultural traits such as traditionalism enable the family business to achieve a higher degree of LTO. Second, the analytical framework based on the theory of planned behavior that was developed in the second study provides an alternative explanation for capital structure policy for small- and medium-sized private firms. The results of the study demonstrate that a high degree of family ownership and control results in use of less debt, and that Confucian values such as filial piety can moderate the firm’s bias against borrowing contingent on the degree of family ownership and control.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of a daughter's managerial style and her personal relationship with her father in father-daughter work relationships in family-owned businesses. This research is an attempt to reveal daughters' perceptions of these occurrences and interactions which often are overlooked in current research and everyday practices. The theoretical framework stems from four distinct but connected areas of research: family-owned businesses, father/daughter relationships, father-son relationships in and outside of family-owned businesses, and men and women in management. The data in this study revealed that the majority of the daughters chose and implemented managerial styles different from their fathers'. However, the daughters reported that differences in style did not create substantial problems for their father/daughter work relationships. Six of the seven daughters reported that having had the experience of working outside of their family-owned businesses provided them the opportunity to develop their own personal differences in management styles. Yet, the apparent incongruence of these daughters' reports reveals that the daughters were more concerned with preserving intergenerational continuity than with facing up to conflicting beliefs in management. Furthermore, the research found that the decision-making styles in which the fathers and daughters engaged did differ and the differences affected their familial relationships in limited ways. Overall, the daughters perceived the interaction between their managerial style and personal relationships with their fathers to be compatible and not debilitating. / Graduation date: 1993

M. Tech. Entrepreneurship / The world is experiencing remarkable social, political, economic and entrepreneurial changes and challenges. Some of these challenges relate to the incorporation of various social cultures to the business culture. Managers, businessmen and entrepreneurs need to reconcile the various cultural dimensions to survive in a highly competitive global market environment. When doing business with people it is important to understand what defines them and most people are defined by their social culture and tradition. Culture is therefore an important aspect in understanding how we all interact in our social and business lives. Culture creates the rules for social interaction that conditions how people will react to others within the business environment and that form of interaction occurs according to rules (norms) and values embedded in our various cultures. The purpose of the study is to investigate the influence of the Ubuntu philosophy and its practice on the functionality of family businesses.

This dissertation examines leadership and leadership development issues in family businesses. The data was collected during late 2003 through qualitative surveys and interviews with family businesses in South Africa. Research findings indicate family business leaders place high importance on selection and development of the next generation leader. The ability and desire ofthe next generation to lead the business is of concern to family business leaders as is the senior generation's ability to let go during transition. Non-family employees are valued as contributors to business success. Gaining the respect of employees is valued as an important aspect of next generation leadership development. Leadership development across generations in family businesses also occurs by the example and values of previous generations. Leadership development involves entering the business at a young age, learning to work hard, acquiring formal education, gaining independent work experience, and engaging in continuing education. Family business leadership needs for education and research include working with family and business dynamics, education in functional business areas, models for effective leadership transitions, forums for peer interaction, and tools for dealing with ownership and estate transitions. Stories told and retold in family businesses reflect sacrifice, fmancial and legal crisis, and disasters. The leadership lessons of theses stories center on hard work, persistence, vision and values, and recognition that the family business is about more than money. Conclusions include that leadership development in family businesses occurs through a synthesis of example from previous generation(s), work experience, and the process of earning employee respect. Recommendations are made for future research on (a) the role of example in family business leadership development, and (b) how stories play a role in passing on values to succeeding generations in family business. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.