Why talking of business succession is right in today’s
Russia
A decade old European statistics shows that only 5-15% of family businesses reached the third generation, and 30% of closures were
considered transfer failures (FEE, 2000; Le Breton-Miller et al., 2004; SBS,
2004). About the same time, in the USA large companies faced shortfalls of
experienced managerial talent for leadership positions due to a rapidly ageing
workforce as the baby boomer generation began to retire (Groves, 2006;
Williams, 2010). Other developed economies of the 2000s represented by both SME
and large firms seemed to suffer from shifts in workplace demographics and lack
of structured efforts in planning for succession too, for example, in
Australia, UK, Canada (Taylor and McGraw, 2004; Ip and Jacobs, 2006). All that
brought issues of business succession to the light, and the discussion of
practitioners and scholars has now resulted in some theoretical models and
practical approaches.
The younger market economy of the Russian Federation
is currently entering the period of business transfers across all industries
and all types of companies. There was the wave of entrepreneurs, who started
their companies 15-20 years ago and led them until recently. Now those founders
age and begin to exit from management and/or ownership positions. That raises
the wave of business successions in Russia.
Researching the evidence of business succession in the
Russian context, testing existing theoretical models and applying the Western
practice to Russian companies seems to be a logical way to reduce the number of
business transfer failures in the coming period of top-management turbulence of
this country.
References
Groves
K. (2006), “Integrating leadership development and succession planning best
practices”, Journal of Management
Development, Vol. 26 No. 3, 2007, pp. 239-260.
(The)
European Federation of Accountants (FEE) (2000), “Keeping it in the family. SME
family business succession”, available at: www.fee.be
(accessed November 2013).
Ip,
B., Jacobs, G. (2006), “Business succession planning: a review of the
evidence”, Journal of Small Business and
Enterprise Development, Vol. 13 No. 3, 2006, pp. 326-350.
Le
Breton-Miller, I., Miller, D. and Steier, L. (2004), “Toward an integrative
model of effective FOB succession”, Entrepreneurship
Theory and Practice, Vol. 28 No. 45, pp. 24-5.
Small
Business Service (SBS) (2004), “Passing the baton – encouraging successful business
transfers: evidence and stakeholder opinion”, available at: www.gov.uk/
(accessed November 2013).
Taylor,
T., McGrow, P. (2004), “Succession management practices in Australian
organizations”, International Journal of
Manpower, Vol. 25 No. 8, 2004, pp. 741-758.
