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Abdullah Zuber
Journal of Business Management and Entrepreneurship (2026)
Purpose: This review examines what empirical research published between 2015 and 2026 establishes about succession in Indonesian family businesses: planning, next-generation readiness and willingness, the founder’s role, family conflict and governance, and post-succession performance.Design/methodology/approach: A structured narrative review was conducted. Eight queries in a general web search engine on 10 October 2026 returned 74 links to 50 unique records; 28 could be opened and read. Eighteen Indonesian empirical studies form the core set, supplemented by one practitioner survey, three South-East Asian contrast sources and six contextual sources.Findings: Three results recur: succession planning, early involvement of the successor and the quality of family relationships are associated with handovers that respondents judge successful. Findings conflict on whether family background raises willingness to succeed, on whether family factors or successor factors matter more, and on the founder, who appears both as the indispensable mentor and as the main obstacle. A planning paradox emerges: planning is the best-supported antecedent, yet 91% of 100 micro and small owners in one survey had no plan. Post-succession performance, conflict governance, large family groups, daughters as successors and failed successions are under-researched; no core study compares performance before and after a handover across several firms.Originality/value: The review separates what the Indonesian evidence supports from what it merely repeats, shows that apparent consensus rests on small samples of surviving firms and self-reported outcomes, and translates the defensible findings into guidance for owners and successors.