The Study Of Factors That Influence The Willingness To Inherit The Business Of Family Business Owner’s Children

Family business in China has been gradually developed since the reform and opening up, but now, with the founder generation gradually aging and their children grew up, the succession problem has become a severe test the family business facing in the process of sustained development. In contrast to the founders’ strong will to internal transfer, their children’s willingness to take over is not strong. In the context of this reality, this paper intend to explore the will of family business owners’ children through in-depth discussion of different influencing factors, to help us better understand why business owners’ children failed to form a strong succession will and on the other hand, to put forward beneficial opinions and suggestions from the perspective of family business successors.In order to put forward our research design, we first conducted interviews with the children of family business owners. According to the interviews, we proposed a systematic model of factors that will influence the succession will of family business owners’children with the help of the theory of planned behavior in the field of social psychology. Then, through the questionnaire study of107children of the family business owners, this paper found that:(1) the succession will of family business owners’ children will not immutable, its intensity is determined by many internal and external factors;(2) the satisfaction with the professional demand, the family members’ succession expectations and children’s succession self-efficacy, will have a significant positive impact on their succession will;(3) the enterprise standardization and development prospect play a certain regulating function between the influencing factors and the children’s succession intention.The main theoretical contribution of this study are as follows:(1) in this paper, we chosen the succession willingness of family business owners’ children as the breakthrough point, embarked from the interview research, systematically studied the factors that may affect the children’s willingness to take over, and enriched the theory of family business succession;(2) according to the interview research and the theory of planned behavior theory, this study well integrated the theory and practice, and also verified the applicability of the theory of planned behavior in the family business research field;(3) beside the framework of the theory of planned behavior, this study also attempts to explore the adjust action of the enterprise characteristics, to provide a new visual angle for the family business succession research.