| As a long-standing organizational form of enterprises, family businesses are a primary contributor to worldwide economy and society. In China, family businesses account for the majority of private enterprises, and they are important contributors to national economy. It has been 30 years since the first family businesses were born in modern China till now, which means that a large portion of them will pass their baton in the near 5-10 years. It has been estimated that, internationally, only a small percent of family businesses could survive into the second generation, and their lack of longevity is a cause for concern. Although a lot of researches have been carried on to solve this problem, we still know little about family business succession. According to several authors and consultants, one of the main reasons is the lack of family perspective in family business studies.In family business research area, the family system is considered to be a unique source of family business distinctiveness. The involvement and impact of family system are the essential factors for family firms to be different from non-family firms. Family system has a great impact on the culture and succession process of family businesses, especially in China which is strongly influenced by family culture. Therefore, it's important to study Chinese family businesses through family perspective.Based on practice and theoretical background mentioned above, this paper mainly answers how the family system impacts on family firms and what is its mechanism in the situation of family business succession. Based on the relative studies in family business research realm, this study is the first to depict the family systems from the two dimensions of family structure and family relationships. Based on 131 samples of listed family firms in our country, this paper finds out that family structures significantly impact on the family firm succession decisions, and the succession decisions have no significant influence on succession outcome in the use of public data, regression analysis, correlation analysis and other methods in the exploratory study of family structure and succession outcome. Based on 88 samples of Chiese family firms which carry on intergenerational successsion, this paper finds out that family relationships has both direct and mediating effects to succession outcome in the use of questionnaire survey data, factor analysis, regression analysis and other methods in the confirmatory study of family relationships and succession outcome.The paper main contribution is summarized as followed:to introduce family variables in the study of family firms and to pay attention to the essential impact factors for family firms; to integrate relevant research results of family systems theory for the accumulation work of building up the theoretical basis of family firms; to be the first to depict family system from the two dimensions of family structure and family relationships, and to promote the study of family in the empirical research in the field of family business. Also, the paper discusses the practical meaning and situation of family business succession. The paper will help further the cognition of the internal structure of the family business as well as its organizational form development, and to weaken the negative impact of family on enterprise development; the exploration study of family structure will help understand the profile of the family firms succession in our country, which provides a theoretical basis for making relevant policies; the confirmatory study of family relationships will help the family firms succession practicer adjust family dynamics, thus to provide strategic options for improving the succession outcome.
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