Overcoming ambipresence: How daughters navigate succession readiness in Saudi family firms

This article analyses unpacks succession readiness by examining the experiences of ambipresent daughters in Saudi family firms. Drawing on self-positioning theories, we investigate how daughters navigate their ambipresence – being simultaneously involved but overlooked and present, but peripheral, in their family firms. The longitudinal qualitative data reveals how the daughters employed strategies to overcome their ambipresence by balancing familial expectations, engaging in self-positioning and creating formal roles for themselves, to empower their succession readiness. However, their succession readiness and ambipresence drove them to establishing their independent entrepreneurial ventures away from their family firms. Their independent ventures represent a strategic assertion of presence, challenging their ambipresence and redefining succession on their own terms. In foregrounding this shift, we contribute to understanding how succession readiness catalysed an alternative form of entrepreneurial leadership and is reconceptualised as a dynamic process forged through self-positioning within, and beyond family firms.