The Mortality of Family Business Leaders: Using a Palliative Care Model to Re-imagine Letting Go

Abstract

The succession literature frames a leader's reluctance to let go as the single largest deterrent to succession planning, and early literature pointed to the stronghold that mortality can have on letting go. The notion has not captured our continued curiosity, preventing a full understanding of the tensions and antecedents of family business succession. Most scholarship on letting go describes a quest for immortality and in this sense, ‘mortality’ has been misapplied and one dimensional. In an interdisciplinary boost to family business, we turn to palliative care, where it is believed that the acknowledgment of one's mortality will facilitate letting go. We develop four typologies of letting go by combining elements of mortality awareness and planning that offers nuance and insights into long-held beliefs about this most vital and finite ‘soft issue’. We discuss emotion governance tools that help change the mortality awareness trajectory and support family business succession.