New article in the “Journal of Family Business Strategy”

In their article “Innovation in the Succession Phase of Family Businesses: Family CEO Successors and Leadership Constellations as Resources”, the authors (all University of Mannheim/ ifm) examine the innovation output of family and non-family CEO successors in family businesses after the succession phase using a sample of 455 German family business successors. From a resource- and knowledge-based perspective, we analyse how the origin of the successor (i.e. family or non-family CEO), the continuing influence of the predecessor and contextual factors are related to innovation output after succession. The results suggest that a family CEO as successor, higher CEO-related human capital of the successor, and longer influence of the predecessor increase the likelihood of post-succession innovation output, and that the effect of the predecessor's influence is moderated by the CEO-related human capital of the successor. These results indicate that in many leadership constellations, a pronounced familiality and access to the predecessor's knowledge resources as well as resource transfer and knowledge spillover create an environment that facilitates innovation.