Abstract: The purpose of the study was to develop a business succession model of SMEs in the digital era. The sample group consisted of 500 SME executives. The research instrument used to collect data was a questionnaire. The statistics used were frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and analyzed through multivariate statistical techniques to construct a Structural Equation Model (SEM). The findings revealed that the confirmatory factor model analysis was consistent with the empirical data with the consistency index as follows: CMIN/DF of 1.123, CFI of 0.993, SRMR of 0.029. and RMSEA of 0.016. And the business succession model of SMEs in the digital era consisted of four main components based on the standardized regression weight at statistically significant level of 0.001 as follows: knowledge management of 0.96, business transfer of 0.93, technology and innovation of 0.88, and collaboration networks of 0.87. And each key component was equally composed of six subcomponents.

Keywords: Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Business Succession, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Collaboration Networks, Business Transfer, Digital Era, Model Development

Pages: 591-606