Family Business Intergenerational Succession and Market Sustainable Competitive Advantage – Based on the Mediating Effect of Intellectual Capital

ABSTRACTChina’s family enterprises have entered the peak of intergenerational succession, and the succession of the second generation is bound to have a great impact on the development of these enterprises. From the perspective of the resource-based view, this paper constructs a relationship model among intergenerational succession, enterprise intellectual capital and market sustainable competitive advantage. Based on the data of a sample of 189 entrepreneurs from family firms in Zhejiang Province, we use multiple regression and structural equation modeling to explore the impact of intergenerational succession on the market sustainable competitive advantage of family firms and the mediating role of the three dimensions of the firm’s intellectual capital, namely, structural capital, relational capital and human capital. The empirical results show that (1) successful succession of a family business significantly promotes the market sustainable competitive advantage of the enterprise; (2) successful succession has a significant promotion effect on the three dimensions of enterprise intellectual capital, and the three dimensions of enterprise intellectual capital play a partial mediating role between intergenerational succession and the market sustainable competitive advantage of the enterprises. This conclusion expands the research on the consequences of intergenerational succession and has important practical significance for the healthy development of family enterprises in China.KEYWORDS: Family businessintergenerational successionintellectual capitalsustainable competitive advantage Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the Wenzhou Municipal Science and Technology Bureau [23WSKZD03-02].