Internal managerial succession in family companies

Objective: The objective of the article is to present internal managerial business succession model, which can be applied in family companies in a situation when a typical family succession (by children or other family members) is not possible or not desirable.Research Design & Methods: The authorial model has been developed in the ENTERtransfer project (INTERREG Central Europe programme) and extended during the pilot actions with the entrepreneurs and the representatives of the local and regional authorities in the Mazovian region in Poland between October and November 2018.Findings: Based on the feedback from the target groups, the internal managerial business succession model has been extended and improved. However, it turned out that depending on the size of the company, the entrepreneurs indicated two basic succession models. SMEs strongly preferred a typical family succession (by family members), whereas the representatives of big companies opted for the internal managerial business succession model, which is related to the involvement of an external person into the company management.Contribution & Value Added: Although the model has been developed in the international project, it is directed mainly to the companies from the Mazovian region in Poland as the project objective is to develop the outputs only for the regional level. The core input into the development of the model was the target group of the ENTERtransfer project: the entrepreneurs and the representatives of different types of authorities. That means that the model has not been developed only by the authors based on the literature, but mainly with the practical support of interested bodies in this area.