Ricky Fernando is an entrepreneur and educator. He started his career by joining his family business in 2009 before starting his own business in 2013. Besides running business, he currently also becomes a part time lecturer specializing in entrepreneurship.
He will defend his Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) in September 2023, on the theme “Managing firm ownership and management in family business succession: The case of Chinese family businesses in Indonesia” under the supervision of Professor Bruno Amann, Professor at Université Toulouse 3, France.
Thesis Direction
Pr Amann Bruno
Thesis Title
Managing firm ownership and management in family business succession: The case of Chinese family businesses in Indonesia
Abstract
96% of companies in Indonesia are family business (Kumar & Prameswari, 2018). One of negative characteristics of family business is internal conflict between family members (Zheng, 2009). Moreover, family business has lower survival rate compared to non-family business (Bozer et al., 2017). Current literatures mostly discuss about Western family business and are not applicable to Asian companies due to cultural differences (Lu et al., 2021; Yan & Sorenson, 2006). This research tries to understand how Chinese Indonesian family businesses manage firm ownership and management among successors. The objective of this study is to propose a method that can be adopted by Chinese Indonesian family businesses so that they can last for several generations.
This thesis focuses on Chinese Indonesian family businesses. 3% of Indonesian population are Chinese but they control around 70% of the economy (J. D. Tan et al., 2019). The sample in this study will be Chinese Indonesian family businesses in which at least the third generation already gets involved in the business. After doing the analysis process, the results show there are ten categories that should be taken into consideration in managing firm ownership and management among successors, which are: adoption of modern management system, traditional Chinese values and characteristics, nurturing younger generation, activity after retirement, communication style, financial arrangement, potential sources of problem, other supporting factors, personal quality, and x factors (factors that are out of human control). Among these ten categories, personal quality and x factors are the core category.
This research also gives managerial and theoretical contributions. It gives practical managerial recommendations based on each category generated in this study. Furthermore, it extends the current knowledge and adds new literature to the existing family business studies especially on division of firm ownership and management among successors which is still under researched. This study is a qualitative study using grounded theory approach to answer the research question. The data collection process used semi-structured interview to get in-depth information. There are 23 interviews conducted in this study including with one failed family business.