| Small business owners approach succession planning differently or not at all. The problem addressed was that the differences between how minority and non-minority small business owners approach succession planning was currently not well understood. The purpose of the non-experimental, quantitative study was twofold (a) examine the differences between how minority and non-minority small business owners' approach succession planning with respect to the overall effects of a developed succession plan and (b) to evaluate the extent to which succession planning relate to minority status, business size, business ownership, business age, and small business owners' age in small business. 206 U.S. small business owners with less than 500 employees participated using an online survey. A unification of items from Coverley and Brown, Peay, Dyer and Gibb, and Sharma et al survey instruments was used to collect data. The results of a Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test indicated that the fitted model was adequate (p = 0.584). The results of Wilcoxon rank-sum tests indicated that succession preparedness of non-minority (M = 2.85, SD = 1.51) were significantly higher than minority (M = 1.59, SD = 1.28) (p = 0.000) and there was no significant difference in formal succession plans between non-minority (M = 2.84, SD = 1.04) and minority (M = 2.65, SD = 0.98) (p = 0.142) while a logistic regression analysis showed a relationship between succession planning and, minority status (chi2 (1, N = 206) = 14.756, p = 0.000), business ownership (chi2 (1, N = 206) = 4.697, p = 0.030), and business owner's age (chi2 (3, N = 206) = 14.008, p = 0.003) and no relationship between succession planning and, business size (chi2 (1, N = 206) = 0.064, p = 0.800) and business age (?2 (2, N = 206) = 1.190, p = 0.551). Small business owner/managers, their advisors, and those involved in entrepreneurial and minority research can profit from these findings. Future studies can utilize research designs that follow minority and non-minority small businesses over time to generate opportunities for understanding how the independent variables in the study are causally correlated to succession planning processes in small business. |
