Family businesses' succession planning: a seven-country comparison

Purpose - The purpose of this article is to measure and compare differences in levels of family business planning for succession in seven countries: Croatia, Egypt, France, India, Kosovo, Kuwait, and the USA. Design/methodology/approach - The research methodology was survey research collecting data from seven countries. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was run to test for differences in family business succession planning between countries, controlling for years in business, number of employees, industry, and type of ownership. ANCOVA was followed by a post hoc pairwise comparisons least significant difference (LSD) to determine which countries did have significant differences in their extent of succession planning. Findings - The paper finds that there were statistically significant differences in family business succession planning between Croatia, Egypt, France, Kosovo, Kuwait, and the USA. However, there were no statistically significant differences between India and the other six countries. Research limitations/implications - There is a growing body of literature focusing on family business succession, as researchers attempt to better understand the problems of passage that can exist in family firms. Thus, an important research question is: why are some family businesses able to successfully manage succession while others are not? Further research is needed to answer this question. Originality/value - This research is original in that it is the first study to test differences in family business succession planning in multiple countries; thus taking the succession planning literature in a new direction.