Management Succession and the Stages of Small Business Development

MEGAN CLIFFORD IS CURRENTLY employed by the Bank of New Zealand in Wellington and was previously a post-graduate student at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Drs. V. Nilikant and R. T. Hamilton are staff members of the Department of Management at the University of Canterbuty. The main purpose of this paper was to confirm through replication the importance of management succession as a cause of organisation chage in family businesses and to do so within a general small business framework which assimilates what are usually and wrongly perceived as separate strands in the small business development process.