Family businesses, with no apparent heir, face the risk of discontinuity. While a number of family businesses rely heavily on non-family employees, the role of non-family employees in the continuity of family businesses is under-researched. The workers’ co-operative model offers one way to address this gap as it represents a model whereby non-family employees gain a stake in ownership whilst the family remains involved. In practice, conversion to ensure continuity is actively promoted in a number of countries. In this paper, the authors explore the role of the workers’ co-operative model as one possible solution to succession difficulties facing family firms. Based on the reported experiences in a number of countries, we identify the motivations behind conversion, the barriers faced and the benefits accruing. We find that, in theory, the worker co-operative model merits the attention of family business scholars as a means of securing continuity and survival of family business. We explore the factors that appear to aid or hinder successful conversions in practice and we make recommendations to policy-makers surrounding the supports required to encourage and facilitate successful conversion.
{"title":"No Heir Apparent? Exploring the Worker Co-operative Model as a Solution to Family Business Continuity","authors":"L. Murphy, O. McCarthy, B. Carroll","doi":"10.5947/jeod.2017.008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5947/jeod.2017.008","url":null,"abstract":"Family businesses, with no apparent heir, face the risk of discontinuity. While a number of family businesses rely heavily on non-family employees, the role of non-family employees in the continuity of family businesses is under-researched. The workers’ co-operative model offers one way to address this gap as it represents a model whereby non-family employees gain a stake in ownership whilst the family remains involved. In practice, conversion to ensure continuity is actively promoted in a number of countries. In this paper, the authors explore the role of the workers’ co-operative model as one possible solution to succession difficulties facing family firms. Based on the reported experiences in a number of countries, we identify the motivations behind conversion, the barriers faced and the benefits accruing. We find that, in theory, the worker co-operative model merits the attention of family business scholars as a means of securing continuity and survival of family business. We explore the factors that appear to aid or hinder successful conversions in practice and we make recommendations to policy-makers surrounding the supports required to encourage and facilitate successful conversion.","PeriodicalId":286914,"journal":{"name":"ERPN: Succession Planning (Sub-Topic)","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128361776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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