Preparing the Next Generation for a Career in the Family Business

Family firms can be very different from one another. Preparing successors involves deciding what kind of firm we want to be. (The five most significant types are described in the paper.) The preparation is in three stages: 1) education at home, at school and at university; 2) experience aimed basically at learning how to delegate to other people and build a cohesive team, how to coordinate their actions towards the achievement of goals, and how to manage change, and 3) career progress in the firm as a form of motivation to make the necessary effort to improve one's abilities. In family firms there is also the need to nurture shareholders and prepare some of them to become members of the board of directors.