Social skills in family business succession: going beyond economic-centred goals

This study builds on previous research on the required competencies of potential CEOs in the family succession process. Whilst aiming to improve the family business literature by exploring the particularities of emerging economies in Africa, this study's main objective is to highlight the importance of a successor's social skills during the succession process, taking into consideration non-economic-centred goals. For this purpose, both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied. First, we conducted five qualitative case studies among Tunisian family business firms. Then, we strengthened our results with a quantitative study by using 105 questionnaires with family business companies that experienced at least one succession in their recent history. The results show that social skills play an important role and have a positive impact on non-economic-centred goals. These goals - rooted in studies developed around the socio-emotional wealth concept - will be discussed in this paper.