Centre for Owner-Managed Businesses
Research reports and articles
Article: Family assets can play a significant role in family businesses
Family businesses need to identify how their core assets fit with the current economic environment; how they can be transferred to the next generation, and how they can add value to the firm’s business strategy. Some family assets are intangible - the family name, their history, values-based leadership and skills. According to this article from Insead by Morten Bennedsen the planning of the succession and the continuation of family assets to the next generation are essential for the survival and success of the business.
Enduring firms transfer assets and knowledge effectively
Morten Bennedsen, December 2016
This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance. It investigates the factors determining whether family businesses´ decides to appoint a family-related or external CEO. The study finds that family successions have a large negative causal impact on firm performance: Operating profitability on assets falls by at least four percentage points around CEO transitions.
Inside the Family Firm: The Role of Families in Succession Decisions and PerformanceMorten Bennedsen, Kasper Meisner Nielsen, Francisco Perez-Gonzalez and Daniel Wolfenzon, 2007
In this article Professor Morten Bennedsen problematize the lacking existence of a clear and general definition of the term "family business".
Morten Bennedsen defines family companies as companies with families as either owners or managers or a combination of the two. They must involve more than one family member, and there has to be a succession, or a planned succession, from one generation to another. In the article Morten Bennedsens explain that this basic model comes in four main flavours.
United by diversity
Morten Bennedsen, April 2015
Studying CEO successions in family firms, we document that successors from controlling families are typically positioned in the firm long time prior to succession and that approximately half have never worked full-time outside the family business. These inside family successors underperform successors from controlling families with outside work experience, who perform on par with professional CEO-successors. We propose that inside successors are more likely to internalize their families' beliefs and business strategies, whereas outside work experience enhances successors' cognitive diversity. Our results suggest that business families should use outside experience as an observable signal in the selection of intergenerational successors.
Underperformance in Family Successions: The Role of Outside Work Experience
Irena Kustec, Charlotte Ostergaard and Amir Sasson, 2025