The Impact of Team Mental Structure on Intergenerational Entrepreneurial Spirit in Family Businesses

Wu Jiong, Xiao Shanshan

Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 46, Issue 09, pp. 3 - 16 (2024)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20240331.203

Summary

When succession encounters transformation, the successor shoulders the mission of leading the family business into a new era. However, the prevalent phenomenon of complacency within family businesses poses challenges to sustained development across generations. To break free from the complacency dilemma, this paper follows the research path of “team will–team process–team behavior” to explore a novel approach to address the complacency phenomenon among successors in family businesses. Through qualitative content analysis of data from China’s A-share listed family businesses that have completed intergenerational succession between 2003 and 2021, the study reveals that a more unified team mental structure is conducive to stimulating the entrepreneurial spirit across generations. Mechanism testing indicates that the team mental structure primarily stimulates the entrepreneurial spirit across generations through resource support, opportunity provision, capability enhancement, and motivation propulsion. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that in enterprises with higher team education levels, longer team tenures, and lower performance levels, the impact of team mental structure on the stimulation of intergenerational entrepreneurial spirit is more pronounced. This paper holds theoretical and practical significance in exploring the stimulation of intergenerational entrepreneurial spirit.

Keywords

family business succession; team mental structure; intergenerational entrepreneurial spirit; emergence