ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how stress influences families and family businesses during succession. Coping strategies are therefore perhaps the key to a smooth and stress-free succession. The successor's coping strategy defined as cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage the taxing demands posed by the family business transfer. The chapter aims to raise awareness of their emotions, which could help them control their emotions better and prepare for succession planning. Emotions are defined by Cosnier as “all the events or states of the affective field characterised by a set of experienced psychics accompanied in varying ways by the intensity and quality of physiological and behavioural manifestations”. Family businesses have long been considered by the literature to be strongly influenced by emotions from the family system, because research has long recognised the importance of emotion in understanding actions. To conclude, the exploratory research makes several contributions: it identified the main sources of stressors for successors their coping strategies during the succession process.
