Succession in Family Businesses of Pakistan: Kinship Culture and Islamic Inheritance Law

Family businesses are growing and turning into complex business groups, transforming from family controlled and managed to family owned and professionally managed public listed businesses. Hence, successful succession of a business and development of future successors are becoming the key success factors for family businesses. This paper examines succession dynamics and successor development within three family businesses in Pakistan. These cases are not only taken from different sectors, e.g., textile, engineering and manufacturing, but are also at different phases of organizational development. The conceptual framework to observe successor development at the pre-entry, entry and succession phases was developed from literature research. The paper further explores the kinship culture in succession of the family businesses, and examines aspects of Islamic inheritance law in family business succession. We find that kinship culture and Islamic inheritance law influence division of the business during the succession phase in Pakistan. The paper also explores transformation of the family businesses from kinship and biradari culture to professionally managed businesses listed on the stock exchange.