دانلود رایگان مقاله مشاوران مطمئن در یک فرایند تجارت خانواده جانشینی - برنامه ریزی

ABSTRACT

Family business succession is a complex and challenging process, in which family members often build on the support of trusted advisors who can be seen as the most relied external source of advice and knowledge that family businesses draw on. Based on an extensive literature review, this article aims to synthesize prior research on both advisors and succession to systematically describe and analyze the role of trusted advisors during the succession-planning process. Based on arguments from agency theory, we discuss potential benefits and drawbacks associated with the involvement of trusted advisors along the four phases—trigger, preparation, selection, and training—of the succession-planning process and outline how trusted advisors can mitigate but also enhance agency costs—in particular goal divergence and information asymmetry—during each of these four phases. Subsequently, we discuss four typical constellations of advisor involvement, which vary in their agency costs and thus have different levels of bias and efficiency. We thereby outline several inefficiencies that result from the common setup in which an incumbent and a successor both rely on their own trusted advisors or a team of expert advisors and propose a balanced and efficient model of advisor involvement as a potential solution which reduces the agency costs. This conceptual article contributes to research on succession, agency theory, and trusted advisors in family firms.

Discussion

Although there is a huge body of literature on the succession process in family businesses (e.g., Sharma, 2004; Sharma et al., 2012), the role of trusted advisors in this process is still understudied. This is surprising, given the important role of those individuals. Building on the emerging stream of research on family business consultants (Strike, 2012), our goal is to systematically analyze the role of trusted advisors during the four important steps of the succession-planning process. Our analysis is inspired by the ideas of Chua et al. (2003) and Howorth et al. (2004), which link the influence of non-family managers to agency costs such as divergent interests and informational asymmetries (Eisenhardt, 1989; Fama & Jensen, 1983) and on Chrisman et al. (2012), who study agency costs for specific types of MBOs. In addition, we contrast potential benefits of advisors involvement with the potential costs of advisor involvement (e.g., Hilburt-Davis & Senturia, 1995; Kaye, 1996; Lane, 1989; Upton et al., 1993). In particular, we emphasize that agency costs (Eisenhardt, 1989) among all three parties of the triadic relationship can be on the one hand reduced and on the other hand enhanced in the presence of an advisor especially if those cost are not managed well. Our stepby-step analysis of the effect of trusted advisors on successionplanning-process outcomes thus reveals the double-edged nature of trusted advisor involvement which can both, increase and decrease agency costs, and contributes to a more balanced and nuanced discussion of the role of family firm advisors (Strike, 2012). Thereby, this article not only contributes to the literature on trusted advisors in family firms but also to the literature agency theory. It shows that the trusted advisor, although he or she is neither owner nor manager of the firm, can substantially alter the relationships between the principals and agents and the firm and thereby influence the level of agency conflicts. As such, this manuscript suggests that the role of potential advisors should be included in further studies analyzing agency costs in organizations. Put differently, it indicates that the simplistic dyadic relationship applied by classic agency studies might be replaced by more complex triadic ones.