Retired Yet Involved: How Even After the Succession Predecessors of Family Businesses Continue to Influence Their Firms

Abstract

Successions are usually portrayed as events where predecessors quickly and quietly fade away from the picture once the transfer of managerial authority is complete. However, for majority of the family firms this is not the case. Family firm predecessors can continue to be involved with the family business even after their retirement in myriad of ways through on-going and overlapping business and kinship relations. Based on interviews with predecessors and successors from nineteen family businesses in Turkey, this article presents that it is the successors’ expectation how their predecessors should act after the succession that determines whether post-succession predecessor involvement has a positive or negative influence on the family business.