Dual-Speed Transformation After Succession: Why Family Business Groups Change while Staying the Same

Generational succession is central in family-controlled firms, but post-succession is often framed as producing either strategic renewal or strategic continuity. Conversely, this paper develops a theory of “dual-speed” strategic transformation in large family-controlled business groups by integrating insights from family business research, business group scholarship, and organisation theory, using the South Korean chaebols context as an extreme illustrative setting for mechanism elaboration. Drawing on socioemotional wealth theory, the attention-based view, and institutional complexity, we argue that succession triggers a successor legitimacy calculus: incoming leaders must signal competence and future orientation to external audiences while preserving family control, socioemotional wealth, and internal coalition stability. This tension leads to selective change across domains. Continuity is expected in control-critical domains, such as governance, ownership, and core affiliates, where change is politically costly. Renewal is more likely in growth-critical domains, such as technology, capability development, and international expansion, where visible change offers greater legitimacy benefits with lower risks to the control core. The paper also identifies boundary conditions that intensify this pattern, including institutional scrutiny, ownership-control complexity, predecessor imprinting, and resource slack.