A Developmental Framework of Career-Decidedness and the Limits of Mentoring in Family Business Succession: The Intervening Role of Career Self-Efficacy

Purpose The study offers a developmental framework on family business succession by examining the role of mentoring in shaping successors’ career decisions. Based on attachment theory and vocational psychology, it offers career decidedness as a foundational construct. It recognizes career self-efficacy as a significant mediating mechanism that precedes formal succession planning and conditions the effectiveness of mentoring interventions. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual study synthesizes research in family business succession, mentoring, attachment theory, and social cognitive career theory. It establishes a developmental framework explaining how early relational experiences determine career self-efficacy and career decidedness, ultimately dictating the reception and efficacy of parental mentoring. Findings This framework demonstrates that career decidedness evolves through longitudinal relational processes rooted in attachment orientations and mediated by career self-efficacy. Repositioning mentoring as a downstream, temporally sensitive mechanism reveals that parental interventions reinforce pre-existing career orientations rather than reshaping them. This perspective explains the heterogeneous outcomes of identical mentoring practices, proving that sustainable family business succession depends on developmental foundations established before formal planning. Consequently, six propositions delineate how attachment, self-efficacy, career decidedness, mentoring reception, and timing interact to dictate intergenerational continuity over mentoring intensity alone. Originality/value The study advances family business scholarship by conceptualizing career decidedness as a distinct developmental construct, mediated by career self-efficacy. Integrating attachment theory challenges the prevailing assumption of universal mentoring efficacy, reframing succession as the culmination of longitudinal relational and developmental processes. Consequently, this framework explains the documented variance in mentoring outcomes and establishes a robust theoretical foundation for future empirical investigations into intergenerational continuity.