Modelagem da Cadeia Sucessória para Empresas Familiares à Luz da Teoria do Capital Humano e da Teoria Stewardship: aplicação em empresas do agronegócio brasileiro

Abstract

The general objective of this thesis is to structure a model of the succession chain of family businesses in the light of the human capital theory and the stewardship theory. This thesis was built in two integrated and interdependent studies, a theoretical study and an empirical study. The first study's goal is to identify the main challenges of family businesses involved in succession processes and the opportunities found for the perpetuation of family businesses. A systematic literature review was carried out, based on the methodology of Tranfield, Denyer and Smart (2003), generating a corpus produced by 59 scientific articles on the succession process in family businesses. The results listed the main opportunities for family businesses to face the challenges of succession. The main identified challenges involve: the absence or inadequate implementation of a succession plan, lack of professionalism, barriers to corporate innovation, pressure to maintain performance, limited opportunities for growth and gender bias. The opportunities include the importance of planning and developing a succession plan, the need for a certain degree of professionalism in managing a family business, maintaining family social capital, seeking innovative development and increasing Corporate Social Responsibility. In addition, the first article presents the ways to build a succession plan, as well as the main ways to professionalize a family business. The goal of the second study is to develop a structuring model of the succession chain of family businesses in the light of human capital theory and stewardship theory. To this end, a collective case study was conducted in four family businesses, analyzed by template. The results in the agribusiness context showed considerable compliance with the assumptions defined in the literature on the relevance of human capital in facing several challenges common to family businesses. In this wake, a succession chain model was structured under the lens of human capital theory and stewardship theory. Human capital theory served as a basis for defining the determinants of formal education, professional experience, and successor development programs (Becker; 1964; Schultz; 1961, 1973), while stewardship theory underpinned stewardship learning, contained in the model (Davis; Schoorman; Donaldson, 1997). The proposed Succession Chain Modeling contributes to studies on family businesses as it fills a gap on “how” and “why” the involvement of family and non-family managers affects the decision-making and management processes of these companies (Rovelli et al., 2021). Furthermore, a robust support framework is presented highlighting the potential impacts of these constructs on the managerial succession process in family businesses operating in Brazilian agribusiness. Regarding the potential social impacts, based on the results of this thesis, it is possible to outline a plan aligned with the possibilities and desires of families for the future of their companies. This meets a demand from civil society as it directly impacts the healthy perpetuation of family businesses after management succession.