Continuity and Change in Family Firms: The Role of Intrapreneurship, Family Dynamics, Emotional Attachment, and Stewardship

The dissertation investigates the mechanisms that enable continuity and change during family firm succession. Germany was selected as the empirical context because family firms play a central role in the German economy and face considerable challenges in identifying suitable family successors and transferring ownership and management responsibility. Drawing on one systematic literature review and three qualitative studies, the dissertation adopts a multilevel perspective to explain how entrepreneurial, relational, emotional, and organizational mechanisms shape succession processes and outcomes. The first paper synthesizes the multilevel antecedents and outcomes of intrapreneurship, providing the conceptual foundation for understanding organizational change. The second paper explores how family dynamics, particularly the tension between innovation and tradition, influence succession through relational mechanisms within the family. The third paper investigates the role of emotional attachment, demonstrating how different attachment patterns affect interactions between predecessors and successors and shape the succession process. The fourth paper extends stewardship theory by showing how non-family employees emerge as stewards during succession, contributing to organizational continuity through stabilizing, protecting, and co-creating roles. Summarized, the four studies provide an integrated understanding of how continuity and change emerge during family firm succession, highlighting the interconnected roles of families, individuals, organizations, and non-family employees.