ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand how family small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) deal with strategic renewal to ensure longevity, particularly through the succession process. Researchers are examining the role of strategic renewal in family firms more and more in order to better understand their commitment to entrepreneurial behaviour over the long term and their ability to cope with change. In the medical field, ‘renewal’ refers to the phenomenon through which an organism replaces a part that has been lost or damaged. Succession is defined by the transfer of direction and ownership from one generation to another, which involves the successor becoming more involved and the incumbent gradually disengaging. Multigenerational family SMEs seemed like very appropriate venues in which to track changes and observe any recurrent patterns of strategic renewal. Globalisation and increasing transparency in the coffee trade, along with growing risks in the mid-1990s, forced margins down considerably.
