Successor Readiness as a Dynamic Capability: Explaining Strategic Adaptation in Family Enterprises
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66203/Keywords:
family business succession, successor readiness capability, dynamic capabilities, strategic renewal, intergenerational knowledge transfer, post-succession adaptive capacityAbstract
Intergenerational succession challenges family enterprises to preserve strategically valuable inheritance while developing the capacity to adapt under next-generation leadership. Existing research identifies successor competence, motivation, knowledge transfer, family relationships, and incumbent support as important antecedents, but provides a fragmented explanation of how these conditions become strategically actionable. The identified gap is addressed through the development of Successor Readiness Capability Theory (SRCT), which reconceptualizes successor readiness as a transition-specific, multilevel dynamic capability embedded in the family-enterprise succession system. Integrating succession, knowledge-based, dynamic-capabilities, and strategic-renewal perspectives, the proposed theory specifies five interrelated processes through which readiness develops: strategic acquisition, knowledge assimilation, legitimacy formation, resource mobilization, and strategic reconfiguration. The resulting model explains how successor potential becomes strategic agency and post-succession adaptive capacity, conditional on incumbent relinquishment, family governance alignment, and environmental dynamism. SRCT advances succession research by distinguishing readiness from its antecedents, linking individual development to organizational adaptation, and conceptualizing succession as capability regeneration across generations. Future research can validate SRC empirically and examine its temporal development, boundary conditions, and adaptive consequences.
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