Las empresas familiares: entre el arraigo territorial y la sucesión generacional. El caso de las empresas familiares de la industria agroalimentaria en la comarca de Urgell (Lleida)

The importance of family businesses in today's business world is hard to question. In Spain, for example, 89 per cent of companies are family businesses, which create 67% of employment and account for 57 per cent of gross domestic product. Among family businesses, much of the wealth generation and job creation in most countries depends and, above all, their presence facilitates in many areas a dynamic of development in many specific territories. However, while some researchers in the field of the family business speak of the strengths of this type of organization, one of them is their deep attachment to the territory where they are. Faced with this, there is other work that identifies a great weakness in the family business, namely its difficulty to survive from generation to generation, since out of 100 family businesses, only about 30 reach the second generation and only 10 third. This research, which is part of the family business dedicated to agribusiness in the region of Urgell (Lleida province), aims, on the one hand, to describe the characteristics of the territorial roots of these companies and, on the other hand, to On the other hand, analyze the degree of planning of the generational succession process within these companies by relying on a series of determinants of the success of the succession process identified from a review of the specialized literature in family businesses. These factors are related to four fundamental actors: predecessor, successor, organization and family. This descriptive research uses a mixed methodological approach: a questionnaire for quantitative data and a semi-structured interview in a case study. The results of this study show that family-owned agro-food companies in the Urgell region have positive aspects for the development of this area. A strong territorial attachment associated with a planned succession of generations, which makes the socio-economic dynamism of these companies more sustainable and stable