Succession of Women in Family Firms: State of the art

Succession is a challenging process for family firm which success may decide on the future existence of the firm and welfare of the family depending on it. Historically, women have played either a minor or no role in the family business. With the growing number of women launching successful businesses and being appointed to leadership positions, it is evident that the situation in the business world is gradually changing. However, this trend is not reflected in the attention given to it in family business research. While succession belongs among the most pursued research topics in the field of family business studies, women and their role in family firm remain virtually in the shadows. It certainly is not because there is nothing to learn from women as the leaders of the family business. Women must face different problems than men both in relation to business and family. While there are well-documented areas, such as differences in leadership and management approach, the succession process and planning is essentially the big unknown. This article deals with succession of women in the family business, particularly focusing on intergenerational succession between an incumbent and a daughter. The aim of this article is to review succession of women in the family firms in order to contribute to better understanding of this under-researched area and to point out the importance of managing and planning the succession process in family businesses and to find out the main problems in daughter's succession. We follow the guidelines for a systematic review in the field of management and therefore proceed in three stages of review process. The data sources are peer-reviewed articles in English in the timeframe of 2005-2015. Based on prior knowledge, we identify specifics of the father-daughter succession process, summarize and discuss the findings, and call for further research.