The Impact of Successor Training Modes on Succession Performance in Family Firms: A Learning Theory Perspective

Family firms adopt various successor training modes and the succession performance also differs a lot. So far, we have had very limited understanding of this problem.Recently, scholars have begun to focus the research on successor training and succession performance in family firms under the background of "father-to-son" succession.Therefore, based on experience learning theory and vicarious learning theory, successor training modes in family firms are described from the perspectives of "direct experience" and "indirect experience" in this research to promote the research on the relationship between successor training modes in family firms and succession performance.The sample enterprises were mainly collected via Shaoxing Youth Entrepreneurs Association.The paper analyzes materials from 183 Chinese family firms which have completed or are about to complete succession in the use of questionnaire survey data,correlation analysis,factor analysis,regression analysis and other methods.The empirical results show that internal job rotation has significant positive effect on both enterprise performance and family performance; external work experience has significant positive effect on both enterprise performance and family performance; mentoring has significant moderating effects on the relationship between external work experience and both dimensions of succession performance; mentoring has significant moderating effects on the relationship between internal job rotation and enterprise performance but didn't work for family performance. Based on these results, the author gives three management conclusions about the successor training modes on succession performance and the moderating effects of mentoring in family firms for the practice development of family business succession.