Inheritance Relationship Of Trust And Inter-generational Family Business Research: International Comparisons And Historical Experience

The theory of family business has long been ignored, although family business itself can be easily found in reality, not to mention the theory on family business from the perspective of history. Meanwhile, the succession of family busiess from generation to generation is important to many firms and countries, although it is also very hard to carry out the study, or to solve the problem in a systematical way. Research from the field of management has provided some fruitful solutions to it so far, although economics did limitedly on it to explore the reasons behind the relationship between trust and family business succession.For this reason, this dissertation, with the help of principal-agent theory, focuses on the relationship between trust and family business succession from the perspective of embededdness. By combining tools of economics, business history and sociology, the papertries to find out the ways of family business succession in different countries, including USA, Japan and China. Also, the author tries to find out the influence of trust behind succession in these countries. The comparison among these countries provides some general solutions to family business succesion.The dissertation has six chapters, they are:Chapter I, Introduction. By introducing the background of the topic of the dissertation, the chapter then displays the latest research in this field, defines key concepts of the dissertation. Then the author asks the key question that arises the discussion in this article, why it is hard for Chinese faily businesses to be succeeded from generation to generation, why it is hard they them to last long? Later, the author introduces key research tools in this paper and the author's innovation.Chapter II, Review on Family Business Succession. In this chapter, the author first makes a review on latest research on family business succession, both at home and abroad. Then, by introducing embededdness, a key concept in social networking theory, the authory tries to find the clue of development of relation between trust and strong ties/weak ties. Based on this, then the author furthers to the development of trust, and tries to define trust and its possible influences to family business succession.Chapter III, Trust, Principal-agent and Family Business Succession, an Economics Model. Based on Chami's principal-agent model, the author adjusts it to explain the relationship between trust and family business succession. The author first verfies bilateral trust of human resources in firms, and then tries to explore different trust, namely, symmetrical trust, assymmetrical trust, perfect trust and perfect distrust, and their influences on the firm's output, and the cost for the principal.Chapter IV, Changes of Family Business Succession in USA and Japan. This chapter focuses on the institutional changes of family business succession in Japan and USA. For Japan, the autor focuses on its unique Primogenitre System and Banto system. For USA, the autor attaches a lot of attention on the trust system which is based on Machussessute Trust, and professional managers and their function in the history.Chapter V, Review on Chiness Family Business Succession. Traditional China has long been characterized for its average distribution of heritage among inheritors. This chapter, however, focuses on the different succession ways from four different typical Chinese family businesses, namely, Le's Family, Rong's Family, Lieu's Family and Nie's Family in modern China. Cases studies from these failies and the comparison among them provides interesting connection between trust and family business succession which might be beneficial for this dissertations's study.Chapter VI, Trust, Succession of Strong Ties and Family Business. By furthering the analysis on the relationship between trust and family business succession, this chapter focuses on the possible reason behind the formation of trust. Then the author furtheres to explore the succession of strong ties in family businesses and tries to find out the key points of the process.