Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Within the next five years about 15 % of the Swedish forest owners that will undergo a succession of ownership. Presently the most common way to acquire a forest estate in Sweden is to acquire it within the family. To decide to let go after a whole life as a forest owner and manager of your own land is for many people a hard decision to make and often requires a long process. The complex process that a succession of ownership often is includes both questions about economy, legal aspects and regulations, taxes and questions of more personal nature, often called soft issues. These personal aspects or soft issues are important and can if handled poorly or not at all negatively affect relationships in the family for a very long time. This study had got two main purposes, one was to study how the family experienced the succession of ownership within their forestry enterprises considering mainly the soft issues, and the other was to try understand what factors that affected the succession of ownership in positive respective negative directions. Five families that had experienced successions of ownership within the past five years was identified during the study and selected to cover three main cases. For this study qualitative interview techniques were used and interviews were made with transferors, the assigns and one sibling in the family. Totally 15 interviews were made. The interviews took 30 min to several hours. Most of the interviews were done face to face in the home of the interviewees. During the study three main scenarios emerged and case studies were adapted to cover these, 1) When the succession of ownership had been done with no problems and all the involved were satisfied, 2) When the succession of ownership resulted in problems and conflicts for the family, and 3) a neutral, either successful or failed outcome. The results showed that there were many different parameters that affected whether a succession of ownership was perceived as positive or negative in the families. How were family relations when the process started was an important factor, did everyone felt involved and respected in the process? Was there only one child who was interested in taking over the property or were there several interested and potential new owners? How did communication with the advisor work? How was the personal chemistry between the advisor and the family members? Did everyone realize the economical situation of the family business including debts, assets, opportunities and risks? The experiences of a succession of ownership were connected to these questions. Some of the families felt that the succession of ownership was hard and bothersome and did not influence only the previous and new generation, in fact all family members could be negatively affected. In other families the succession of ownership instead resulted in better relations between family members.