Dr. James Vardaman, holder of the Chair of Excellence in Management in the Fogelman College of Business, was recently featured in the Harvard Business Review for a paper he co-wrote with Dr. Will Tabor, professor at Belhaven University in Jackson, MS. The paper focuses on succession planning challenges for family businesses and techniques for a successful transition. The leadership succession from one family member to another is one of the most difficult challenges for family-owned businesses. Nonfamily employees, who are vital to firm success, may view family successors as unqualified or the beneficiary of nepotism. Gaining buy-in for the next generation of leadership is thus essential for maintaining morale and motivation within the firm. In order to gain insights on how to foster such buy-in, Vardaman and Tabor reviewed 30 years of family business studies. Their findings suggest nonfamily employees actually prefer a familial successor, because nonfamily employees of family businesses often enjoy the family-like culture and atmosphere in the firm. Through their research, they identified three ways family businesses can foster confidence and acceptance for a successor.
"Dr. Vardaman's research is great example of the high quality and relevant scholarship being done by Fogelman faculty," noted Dr. Damon Fleming, dean of the Fogelman College of Business and Economics. "This work is among the 18 A+ and A ranked articles that are published or accepted for publication in 2020 by faculty in the Management Department."
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