We investigate factors that influence family business owners' choice between passing ownership within the family or to new external owners. Taking an embeddedness perspective focusing on owner-family structure and involvement, we hypothesize that ownership dispersion, number of potential heirs, multigenerational involvement, and whether the chief executive officer is a family member influence the choice of an internal or external transition of ownership. We build a longitudinal data set from a sample of 3,829 family firms and their ownership transitions. Our theorizing and findings regarding ownership transitions complements the abundant research on management succession and therefore constitutes an important contribution to the literature.
The first year of studying has been extensively researched in order to better understand the transition into Higher Education (HE) as well as the phenomena of student performance, retention, and drop out. Although research points to the importance of the socio-cultural dimension of first-year experiences, surprisingly little is known about the actual processes through which students integrate into the socio-cultural context of HE. To address this research gap, an interview study was conducted with 15 first-year university students. The analysis revealed distinctive transition processes into HE that were developed into a typology with four transition types.
Interestingly, students who tended to be more critically reflective about their studies were in danger of having a rougher transition than less critically reflective counterparts. For the former, it is essential to develop social relationships that tie them to their studies while the latter manage study-related challenges by simply working through them.
Students' experiences of their first year of studying are of prime importance for their further development in Higher Education (HE). Consequently, the first year and the related phenomena of student performance, retention, and dropout have been extensively studied. Research shows that during the first year, the individual student's ability or failure to adapt to the new socio-cultural environment influences his/her academic success. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the actual processes through which students integrate into the socio-cultural context of HE. Applying a socio-cultural approach, our qualitative interview study followed 14 university students through their first year, investigating why some students experience an easier transition into HE compared to others. Our research results in a typology of four transition types characterized by their orientation towards the socio-cultural context of studying.
