Einsatz eines Assessment-Centers im Rahmen von Unternehmensnachfolge

The succession process in family enterprises is a complex and potentially difficult challenge. The retiring boss and his or her junior successor have to negotiate family ties, potentially different entrepreneurial plans, and their feeling of responsibility for the company’s welfare. Such inter-generational tensions, influenced by different attitudes, might cause massive conflicts. To make a succession process within families successful, economic, legal, and psychological factors need to be addressed. Psychological methods could help to estimate the successor’s rating on established personality criteria of entrepreneurial success. The result of a suitable psychological diagnostic assessment demonstrates their strengths and weaknesses. This enables the successors to overcome or to develop strategies to compensate for their weaknesses. Such a process has the potential to increase their entrepreneurial fitness and to calm the retiring person’s worries. This paper describes the application of a Single-Assessment Centre on the basis of a case study in the context of entrepreneurial succession planning. The results from the Single-Assessment case study highlight the successor’s low self confidence and lack of social skills. These outcomes are interpreted within the framework of a psychodynamic model. On a more abstract level the results lead to the conclusion that, regarding the intra-familial succession planning process, it is necessary to solve the successors’ oedipal conflicts.