The shadow of the prince: Incumbents' coercive control over successors in family organizations

During family firm succession, parent-incumbents are often caught up in a paradox of empowering and dominating their child-successors. To explain this recurring phenomenon, we develop a psychoanalytic theory of power transfer in patriarchal family organizations, which predicts that parent-incumbents tend to exert generational coercive control, paradoxically, when their child-successors are too unwilling/incapable or too willing/capable to take over the organizations; yet they tend to relinquish more power to those successors who are seen as moderate in their willingness and capability. In Study 1, regression analyses based on data coded from 57 succession cases in ancient Chinese patriarchal monarchies (from 403 BC to 959 DC) revealed a U-shaped relationship between the capability of successor princes and the father kings’ coercive control (persecuting or murdering the princes). In Study 2, based on survey data from parent-child dyads of 157 contemporary Asian family firms, we found nonlinear main effects of child-successors’ willingness and capability on parent-incumbents’ coercive control (restraining successors’ power), and incumbents’ high narcissistic personality attenuated these U-shaped relationships. In Study 3, based on another survey on 103 parent-child dyads in Chinese family firms, we found a U-shape relationship between capability and coercive control only when incumbents are high in family-work role-integration.