Family business

This thesis focuses on family business companies and above all on their problem of succession planning. For the purposes of this work, I have chosen a family business company that is owned by two shareholders. Both shareholders are going to leave the company within next 5 to 10 years. The thesis deals with the succession plan of both shareholders and this concerning the rate of preparedness as well as the rate of coordination of both plans. Prior to the research, two hypotheses were fixed. The first one says that succession in family is the best strategy of succession for the chosen company. This strategy has been confirmed. The second strategy saying that the shareholders as well as the generation of successors have different ideas about the company handover was not confirmed. The shareholders and their chosen successors accord in basic points with the company handover. The STEP analysis of macro-relationships as well as the Stakeholder analysis of micro-relationships was done as a part of the research. The evaluation of influence of different interest groups in the scope of the Stakeholder analysis was performed by the shareholders. The primary research was completed with three interviews: the first one, analysing interview with one of the company shareholders; the second one, structured depth interview with both shareholders and with their sons ? the chosen successors and the third one, evaluating interview. On the basis of the above mentioned analyses and interviews, a SWOT analysis of internal milieu (of its strenghts and weaknesses) as well as of external milieu of the company (of its threats and opportunities) was performed and a strategy focused on the succession planning was proposed. This strategy was presented to all interested participants during the mentioned third, evaluating interview and the objectives including deadlines and responsibilities were fixed. The proposed strategy compounds of three parts. The first and second part focuses on elimination of weaknesses of the company. The company thus has to weaken the risk resulting from the splitting of company shares between two shareholders with equal parts and further, the company has to eliminate the risk of its bankruptcy during the handover to the generation of successors. Third part of strategy focuses on exploitation of the company´s strenghts in order to weaken the external risk and to valorise the opportunities. The company will thus try to exploit its competitive advantages at the market threatened with the present depression. Detected competitive advantages are the exploitation of modern methods and technologies in company management and extension of its services through an engineer's office