Abstract
Carrying out successful succession in family businesses is an issue of vital significance for businesses themselves, and a great challenge for the pragmatics of family business management. It is also an issue important for the dynamics of Poland's economic development since it regards a wide spectrum of Polish enterprises. The paper introduces its own research methodology showing its development against the background of the methodology in the world academic research on this subject. It includes the analysis of the questions of business succession in Poland on the basis of the authors' own research materials. The empirical research was carried out in two stages. The first of them, conducted in the rst half of 2009, was based on straw polls (the sample was 496 family businesses), whereas the other one, conducted in the second half of 2009, was based on in-depth interviews (the sample was 61 family businesses).