The Strategic Phase of the Generational Turnover in Family Businesses: an Analysis Model Based on Intellectual Capital Management

The proposed work aims to take part in the outstanding theoretical and empirical debate on the family businesses’ need to formulate a business strategy that will be able to preserve the enterprise continuity in the market. With regard to this, the management of the generational turnover plays a crucial role in the enterprise life for different reasons. In family businesses, especially the small ones, the entrepreneur is the dominant figure both in the ownership and management roles. This can be a point of strength and source of competitive advantage for these businesses but, at the same time, it makes small family businesses vulnerable to changes, including that of the generational turnover. The replacement of the entrepreneur figure, repository of wide and different knowledge heritage, professional experiences, competences, relational ability, can cause the loss of traditions and competences and attempts the value process creation. The enterprise “tradition”, having reference to the entrepreneur, can become a competitive advantage for the enterprise only if the intellectual capital is managed and transferred by the entrepreneur and if the successor is able to make a change in strategy in consideration of the present and perspective market demands. For these reasons, in family businesses the generational turnover constitutes a very problematic phase for the difficulty in maintaining and transferring the entrepreneur’s knowledge, values and traditions to the successor. In this regard, the present study aims to investigate the interactive dynamics existing between the established entrepreneurial knowledge, the “traditional values” that have been transferred by the outgoing entrepreneur, and the new entrepreneurial knowledge, introduced and developed by the incoming entrepreneur that generally represents a source of changes. This work proposes a conceptual model to improve the management of the mentioned interactive dynamics during the generational turnover phase, which is constituted by some elements that can be traced back to the researches on the intellectual capital and it is useful to identify the critical and risks aspects during the turnover. The mentioned model, functional to manage the entrepreneurial knowledge transfer, represents an evolution of some theories that have already been expressed in the economic literature as it includes in its analysis not only the entrepreneur and his successor’s knowledge, the organizational structure but also the company’s internal and external relations. The introduction of the above mentioned variable is strictly connected to the awareness that “the tie value” among the strategic players, including the bond value existing within the family, represents a key factor to ensure both the continuity of the economic activity and the preservation of the family business tradition. Finally, the application of the model to some real case studies is intended to verify its attitude in constructing and representing the risk of failure of the generational turnover, in order to individuate the most critical aspects and stimulate the implementation of prompt corrective actions.