Inheritance Culture and Management Succession of Family-Owned Businesses in Nigeria: An Empirical Study (Published)
Inheritance culture and management succession in family-owned businesses in Nigeria were studied to determine how family-owned businesses manage succession and continuity of family-owned business in Nigeria. The study dwelt on inheritance culture such as primogeniture, gender-restriction and multiple heirships and how they affect management succession of the family business. The study adopted descriptive design, the population of the study was (3,252) and sample size studied was 347 business owners/managers. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The hypotheses were tested with multiple regressions. The result shows that Primogeniture inheritance rule with (β=.146, t=4.150, p<.000); and Gender-restriction inheritance rule with (β=.806, t=28.895, p<.000) has statistically significant effect on management succession of family-owned business while multiple heirship inheritance rule is not statistically significant on management succession of family business with (β=.043, t=1.288, p<.199) Furthermore, the result show that gender-restriction have the highest impact on management succession of family-owned businesses. We conclude that Inheritance culture has the significant and positive effect on management succession of the family-owned business. We recommend that there is the need for inheritance culture be modernized to allow succession effort thrive especially in family-owned businesses in Nigeria. Furthermore, the government should formulate a good policy that will forestall the devastating effects of inheritance culture on family-owned business.
Keywords: Family Owned Business, Gender-Restrictive, Inheritance Culture, Management Succession, Multiple Heirship, Primogeniture