The impact of affective commitment on daughters’ succession intentions in family firms: The role of family firm ownership structure and in-group collectivism

Succession is one of the most heavily investigated topics in family business research, and significant work has focused on understanding the drivers of the intra-family succession. However, less work has looked specifically at the succession intentions of women, or more specifically, daughters. Drawing on theory from psychology and concepts around affective commitment, we explore two determinates of intra-family succession, the affective commitment of the female successor and the country-level cultural environment in which the daughter and her family are embedded. Using data from the 2013 Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students Survey (GUESSS) of 6,249 female students from 18 countries, our findings suggest that affective commitment plays a critical role in intra-family succession for women, and that in-group collectivism positively moderates that role depending on how the ownership of the family firm is distributed among parents. In addition, the way that the country-level culture amplifies this relationship is stronger for women potential successors than for men. Implications are discussed.