A Research On The Succession Of Chinese Family Business

Family business as a form of economic organizations plays an important role in the economic development. Since the beginning time of the reform and opening up in the mainland in the 80s, family business has grown for nearly 20 years. Many of them will face the succession from the first generation to the second generation. The family business in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia established during the 50-70s, and developed rapidly in the 80s. Some of these enterprises have successfully transferred to the second-generation or third-generation. There are also some enterprises as the ones in the mainland which are in the period of the succession from the first- generation to second-generation. Therefore, it is worthy of doing research on the succession of the Chinese family business. Let the Chinese family business last longer than three generation.Many scholars regard the average allocation of the heritage as a main reason that the Chinese family business can't last for more than three generations. Therefore, the thesis will first review the origin and formulation of the average allocation system, and analyses the reasons why the average allocation replaced the primogeniture and wealth sharing. The traditional "family" culture makes the institution of the average allocation become the main system of the property heritage and segmentation. But many Chinese traditional family businesses restricted by the average allocation can still last more than three generations. By researching the authors found that the Chinese traditional family business had already made the improvement and innovation in the institution of the average allocation. They used the different institutions and methods in different aspect, such as ownership, management, organization, brand, social capital and family spirit. The successful succession experiences of Chinese traditional family business are worthy of study and reference.In this thesis, the author will do the research from the "long time" perspective and study the succession of Chinese family business with the study of the traditional household heritage and the traditional family businesses. And use the institution changes theory, contract theory, principal-agent theory and game theory to analyses the succession system with the support of the historical cases...