Research On Knowledge Transfer In Chinese Family Business Succession Process

Chinese private economy has a rapid development as it has the supports of the policy of reform and opening after a few decades, which of 95% enterprises are family-owned businesses. So family businesses have made important contributions to the social and economic development. But family businesses face a growing challenge, the old saying "clogs to clogs in three generation" verified the high failure rate of family business succession. It is said that only 30% of family businesses successfully survive to the second generation, and 10%-15% to the third generation. therefore, how to ensure the family business smoothly complete the power heritage becomes the focus of entrepreneurs and theorists. Although the research of family business subject in recent years become increasingly active, we found that the domestic research lags far behind the needs of practice, in this context this article selected Inheritance of family business as a research subject.The author read and studied the home and abroad literatures about family business succession and found the family business succession should persist process view and multi-dimensional view, that is family business succession is a long socialized process and family business should experience the power transmission but also knowledge transfer. Chapter2 the literature review made a tentative explanation on these issues and this study raised the questions:what factors affect knowledge transfer in family business succession process? what is the process of knowledge transfer?In the third chapter the knowledge in the transmission process are influenced by many factors and we made a deeply detailed analysis. First of all the nature of knowledge brought out the difficulties of knowledge because knowledge deeply is rooted in family business and stored in the minds of family business founders; Second, participants including the sender and recipient's willingness and ability explained the problems of knowledge transfer in family business transmission; And the next factor is the context of knowledge transmission and we analyzed that the trust relationship between the incumbent and the successor facilitate knowledge transfer, as well as familial cultural traditions may help the knowledge transfer in the family business succession process. Finally we constructed a model of knowledge transfer in the family business transmission process. And then this study presented channels of knowledge transfer.Chapter IV the author introduced the case of Group Fotile and learned the experiences from this successful case and identified the general knowledge, lower-level knowledge about enterprise and high-level knowledge related management which needed be transferred in the succession process. General knowledge includes familial knowledge and science knowledge in school. The lower-level knowledge means operation knowledge. The high-level knowledge involves strategy, management philosophy, leader skills, other key stakeholder knowledge and so on. And hereafter we analyzed these knowledge transfer process. These knowledge construct the whole personal knowledge system, and the general knowledge constitutes the core of the whole personal knowledge and it can help better absorb other relevant tacit knowledge.Chapter5 mainly made some suggestions to facilitate knowledge transfer in the family business succession, the first proposal is that family business must enhance the knowledge strategic value in the family business succession. Secondly, participants promote willingness and ability of knowledge transfer for the purpose of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge transmission; the third suggestion is strengthen the successor's mission and ability to gain knowledge. And the last one, family businesses should create a suitable business environment for knowledge transfer to ensure smoothly transfer knowledge.