Business Succession in Indian Family Businesses in South Africa
Abstract
Family businesses play a pivotal role economically and socially in most countries. The study aimed to identify and understand the experiences of Indian family businesses in South Africa with regard to business succession. A quantitative research approach was used with data collected through Google forms online survey. Data was collected from sixty (60) business people from Indian-owned family businesses in South Africa. The study interrogated the following factors which have an influence on family business succession: business ownership influence in succession, business readiness for the exit of owner and succession, the role of the owner after exit from business and selection criteria of the right successor. Findings revealed that the majority of families (86.27%) said it is important to have a hundred percent or full ownership of the business and that a successor should be selected within the family from their bloodline. Findings also revealed that the majority of businesses (86.27%) were not fully ready for the exit of the owner or current leader of the business and that on the exit of the owner; a majority (90.2%) of businesses will prefer to have the owner playing an active advisory role in the business. It is recommended that family-owned businesses should plan for succession on time and draft a well-planned strategic succession plan for the business. It is also recommended that an objective criterion be used in selecting a successor who will take the business forward. Healthy business continuity should be the ultimate goal of succession and families should not sacrifice successful business continuity because of their, internal differences and conflict, culture, blood relations, gender or religion.
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2021 Vuyokazi Mtembu, Yaaser Mahomed
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Author (s) should affirm that the material has not been published previously. It has not been submitted and it is not under consideration by any other journal. At the same time author (s) need to execute a publication permission agreement to assume the responsibility of the submitted content and any omissions and errors therein. After submission of a revised paper in the light of suggestions of the reviewers, editorial team edits and formats manuscripts to bring uniformity and standardization in published material.
This work will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and under condition of the license, users are free to read, copy, remix, transform, redistribute, download, print, search or link to the full texts of articles and even build upon their work as long as they credit the author for the original work. Moreover, as per journal policy author (s) hold and retain copyrights without any restrictions.