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Intellectual capital (IC) and social capital (SC), as forms of intangible value in organizations, are crucial assets in today's volatile business environment. Efforts to retain and develop these intangibles are becoming more deliberate and disciplined. However, organizations fail to recognize the relationship between organizational distress and the loss and/or reduction of intangible value. The loss of intangible value may potentially impact an organization with equal or greater damage than the loss of more tangible value. IC and SC generate many outcomes beneficial to the individual and the organization. These benefits are reduced when stress of employees becomes excessive and damaging. The relationship between the health of an organization and the degree of impact of distress serves as a lingering threat to organizational financial resources. Managers must build upon the growing knowledge from research and practice to help organizations account for the costs of organizational distress, translate the importance of intangible value into tangible terms, and garner support for developing IC and SC to obtain business objectives. Deliberate and disciplined effort to build collaborative capital can facilitate the growth of IC and SC which minimize the damage of organizational distress.

Taking company succession as an alternative means of embarking on an entrepreneurial activity, the aim of this study is to explore those intangible assets that are regarded as attractive from the viewpoints of external successors. Thereby, the focal point is on the preparation stage in which promising companies are identified and scrutinised.

The strategy of research behind this paper is the application of a mixed methods approach that is divided into an internet‐mediated questionnaire and a series of in depth interviews (given priority).

The findings suggest that intangible assets have a notable influence on the intention of an external successor to take over a company. This would suggest that the traditional issues considered with regard to company succession, such as tax, legal and financial aspects, should be extended to include intangible aspects. The findings are summarized by proposing a framework for the role of intangibles in external succession, thereby highlighting critical intangibles as perceived by external successors.

This explorative study is by no means exhaustive; however it is regarded as a valuable fundament for further research activities associated with the role of intangible assets in terms of company succession, particularly external succession.

The framework appears to be a valuable tool for understanding the importance of intangibles in external company succession in general and particularly their influence on external successors' business acquisition intentions. The findings are particularly considered as helpful for incumbent‐owners who plan to sell off their companies.

The study's findings can be viewed as a new perspective on company succession as it highlights the intangible assets that make a company attractive to external successors. Given the increasing number of small to medium‐sized enterprises waiting to be transferred to new owners, these findings are highly important as they provide a more holistic view of the dynamics of company succession (and external succession in particular).

This paper deals with the leeway organizations have to develop and design self‐managing teams by using a model containing four modal verbs: must, may, can and will. “Must” refers to the need for local decision making and is considered to be the result of diversity in environmental demand and variety in work processes. “May” pertains to organizational and work designs that facilitate local decision making. The skills and abilities of the workers are covered by the modal verb “can”, while “will” refers to the attitudes of the workers towards self‐managing teams. The model may help to find and realize a match between these “modalities”.