Conflicts and Negotiations in the Intergenerational Succession of Family Firms: A Literature Review

This chapter intends to stimulate a serious debate on the topic of conflict in family businesses and the theory of negotiation as a tool to resolve these conflicts. The methodology is based on the survey of the main literature on these topics. Despite the literature on conflict management is highly developed as well as the literature in family business, scholars and researchers have not yet deepened several areas of conflict management in family businesses, so the two fields of literature are yet not well integrated, showing a potential for future research avenues. We then propose a research agenda identifying the issues and research gaps that should be explored by researchers to reach a deeper understanding on conflict resolution in family businesses.