Letting go of the firm or “my baby” as some entrepreneurs describe their creation, leads to a certain amount of stress (Rahim 1996, Kets de Vries 1999). Dealing with stress in singular events as the transfer of a business, is hardly been subject of research (Uy et al. 2012). Improving coping strategies in business transfers for the incumbent could be of importance as statistics indicate the continued aging of owners in the European Union. Expanding the possibilities of incumbents to sell their business and move on to their next phase in their life would help to offset such negative effects to each national economy. The number of failed business transfers of viable SMEs now threatens innovative driven European economies (European Commission 2003, Van Teeffelen 2010, Stone et al. 2004). A recent study calculated that the Dutch economy suffers 20,000 unnecessary SME liquidations and approximately 10,000 failed successions per annum, with a projected economic damage of 80,000 jobs, a loss of turnover of almost € 4 billion and a destruction of assets of about € 2 billion yearly (Van Teeffelen 2012). Therefore we believe that coping strategies and psychological barriers in business transfers deserve more academic attention. Our aim is to check and add items to the list of psychological barriers and finally to relate barriers to coping styles. Therefore we engaged in a qualitative study that seeks to explain a particular issue and allows the researcher to study issues in depth and produces detailed data on a small number of individuals (Hyde 2000).
Stevenson & Landström (2002) state that Opportunity, Ability and Motives predict entrepreneurship in general. Connecting thirty previous studies we test if the market awareness, endurance, planning and preparation as entrepreneurial ability factors, staff as opportunity factor and the reason for transfer as motive predicts three short term performance (needed transfer time, satisfaction and emotional attachment after transfer). We tested our hypotheses on a representative sample of 130 Dutch business owners who succeeded in a business transferring in 2005 and 2006. Market awareness predicts a faster transfer. Surprisingly more planning and preparation is the best predictor for a long transfer time as does the absence of the selling business owner. More or less forced transfers (illness, declining performance) predict lower satisfaction were as endurance predicts a higher satisfaction. This is valuable information for buyers, business brokers, accountants and bankers. The operationalisation of transfer performance seems vital. All main predictors, even the control variables, show only effect on either the needed transfer time (effectiveness measure) or satisfaction (experience measure). This confirms earlier findings (Van Teeffelen, 2007b). Our common challenge in future is to compare internationally the succeeded, non-succeeded transfer and exits.
Combining overview studies and adding own qualitative research on top of that, a questionnaire is developed to operationalize quality of digital matching platforms for sellers, buyers and advisors in SME business transfers and acquisitions
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