Week 4- Succession Planning

Hi all,

For week four we discussed the importance of succession planning. From what we discussed and concluded in regards to the Tai Po Fruit Traders Case I feel succession planning and just a family businesses in general are such a messy affair! Looking for interesting articles in regards to succession planning I stumbled upon this interesting piece. The author discusses how succession planning differs according to cultures (East vs. West). I found this interesting and it made me think of the other cases we have discussed in class. In regards to succession it’s actually quite interesting to note that both the Harilela and Tai Po Case was kind of ‘all in the family’ in regards to succession. David was looking after Jimmy and Donald’s empire and was under pressure by his family not to let go of Tai Po despite his own dreams; and Hari saw Aron as an obvious choice in regards to the Harilela empire. However, when we go back to week 2 and look back at the Ilapak case, Roger was more eager to hand over his company to Luciano before passing it along to his son Guy.

I am aware that individualistic Western cultures and the collectivist Asian cultures differ in their styles of conducting business. However, I find it interesting to see that there seems to be a prominent difference in matters such as family business succession planning between the cultures too. Perhaps this has to do with Asian family systems vs. Western family systems in general? Asian and Southeast Asian cultures are usually composed of a joint family system as opposed to the Western nuclear family system, which can perhaps also influence succession. Harilela and Tai Po were more concerned with keeping the business within the family as opposed to Roger in Ilapak who was actually concerned that heavy nepotism after his departure from Ilapak may actually hurt his company.

Any thoughts?

http://www.step.org/family-business-succession-planning-east-versus-west