View and management of innovativeness upon succession in family-owned SMEs

• The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into how thesuccessors of family-owned manufacturing SMEs view and manageinnovativeness. Research into company take-overs mainly focuses on largecompanies and little is known about innovativeness in research on familyownedbusinesses, often SMEs. This paper presents findings from ten companysuccessions, five of which describe family successions and five external ones.The paper shows that there is little difference in how various types of successorview and manage innovativeness. A successor is chosen with care and this alsoinfluences the view and management of innovativeness: other criteria seem toapply in the succession and any (radical) changes can only be introduced if anumber of contextual factors are managed properly.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Annan teknik -- Övrig annan teknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Other Engineering and Technologies -- Other Engineering and Technologies not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Succession

family-owned manufacturing SMEs

innovativeness

acquisition

take over

radical vs incremental innovation

Business and economics

Ekonomi

Produktinnovation

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)