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The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of environmental dynamism on different EO dimensions in family firms. The authors also examine the moderating role of national culture (uncertainty avoidance and in-group collectivism) and the level of family control and influence in fostering/hindering this relationship.

A survey was conducted among 1,143 family firms from twenty-eight countries. The authors developed and tested hypotheses through a fixed-effects regression analysis.

The findings suggest that environmental dynamism has a positive effect on all three EO dimensions. Analysis reveals a positive moderating role of family control and influence and negative moderating roles of in-group collectivism and uncertainty avoidance.

The findings imply that family firm managers should carefully interpret the influence of their national culture on family firm behavior. More specifically, family firms in dynamic environments should consider the importance of the national culture in which they are embedded. Those operating in high uncertainty avoidant and highly collectivist cultures should take proactive steps to cultivate a corporate entrepreneurial culture. On the other hand, the family should not undermine the effect of its control and influence. In dynamic environments, family control and influence may be a competitive advantage in reinforcing entrepreneurial orientation.

The study contributes to the literature on EO in family firms by expanding the previous research on the antecedents of EO and examining moderation effects of culture and family control and influence across a broad multi-country sample. In contrast with the common findings regarding the effect of family logic on EO, the study shows the strengthening role of family control and influence in the relationship between environmental dynamism and EO. The authors show that culture as an informal institution may also play a critical role in hindering/strengthening the relationship between environmental dynamism and EO.

This paper aims to analyze the effect of family control and influence dimension of the socioemotional wealth (SEW) on capital structure of large listed firms in the North African region.

The study uses panel data of the top 98 largest listed firms in the North African capital markets over the period from 2018 to 2022. The analysis is conducted employing random effects models.

Findings suggest that large listed firms in North African region rely on more use of equity rather than debt financing. Further, results show that family control and influence dimension of the SEW, has no significant impact on the capital structure of North African large listed firms. This implies that the financing behavior of large firms listed in the North African countries is driven by financial and rationale factors rather than non-economic considerations. Indeed, findings support assumptions of the pecking order theory.

This transnational study provides new insights into relevancy of socioemotional theory in explaining capital structure decisions within large family businesses in emerging markets. Findings have the potential to enhance analysts', investors' and practitioners' understanding of financing decisions by large listed firms in this region. This, in turn, can aid in conceiving adapted financing solutions.

This study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by examining the role of family firm succession in shaping the firm's approach to financialisation, which has received limited attention in the previous research. In addition, the study explores the influence of factors such as clan culture, concentration of control and generational differences on the relationship between succession and financialisation.

Data were based on a sample of 7,023 firm-year observations, compiled from the listed family firms in China's A-share. Several tobit models are used for analysing the data and testing the hypotheses.

Family firm succession is negatively related to the level of financialisation, and this relationship is influenced by clan culture, concentration of control and the stage of succession. Specifically, a higher clan culture, a greater concentration of ultimate control by the controlling family member and the dominance of the first generation in management strengthens the negative relationship between family firm succession and financialisation.

This study offers new insights into the consequence of family firm succession on a new area of the firm's strategy, i.e. financialisation. The study further advances the understanding of family firm succession by considering the role of clan culture, the concentration of control and the stage of the succession process.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of the nature of ownership and board characteristics on the investment choices in joint ventures (JVs) from the dimensional point of view, controlling for the effect of JV type and other components of intellectual capital.

The authors study a sample of Italian, Spanish, German and French nonfinancial listed firms over the 2010–2018 period, controlling for the fixed effects of the company's sector of operation and the year. The authors also analyze the effect of family control and influence on JV investment size, taking into consideration certain board characteristics, the type of JV, human capital efficiency, structural capital efficiency and capital employed efficiency while also controlling for a firm's profitability and size. To test the hypotheses, GLS panel data was used.

The results indicate that the size of the investment in JVs is smaller for family firms than for nonfamily businesses. The presence of CEO duality has an opposing effect on the size of the investment in joint ventures as it has a lowering effect in family businesses while it exerts an amplifier influence in nonfamily businesses. Moreover, the type of joint venture has a significant effect for family firms: the choice of a link joint venture reduces the size of the investment. The authors find that human capital efficiency increases JV investment size for all firms.

This study is the first to analyze the effect of the main dimension of socioemotional wealth – family control and influence – on a firm's JV investment size. It controls for the effect of JV type – link or scale – and the interplay of the other IC components.

This paper investigates the impact of family influence measured by the F-PEC scale on private enterprise (both family firms and lone founders) leadership succession strategy.

The research dataset is comprised of 390 private enterprises whose head offices were situated in the voivodeships of Lower Silesia and Wielkopolska in Poland. The authors collected data through CAPI (computer-assisted personal interviewing) method, as well as through comprehensive, structured interviews with company owners. Data were analysed using hierarchical logistic regression for each type of succession strategy.

The results suggest that increased family influence does not necessarily lead to intra-family leadership succession in private enterprises. Importantly, a range of findings contradicted authors' predictions. The relationship between the overall F-PEC scale values signifying the multi-faceted family influence over the business and the choice of internal successor was weakly negative for the total sample; also, the higher the overlap between family and business values and the higher the commitment to family business, as evidenced by the Culture subscale, the lower was the occurrence of intra-family successor choice in the population of lone founders. The Culture subscale also increased the prevalence of lack of succession planning in the sample of lone founders.

While several studies suggests that family firms may be more prone to choose an intra-family succession scenario, it remains unclear how lower levels of business and succession experience, may influence the successor choice. Indeed, some studies suggest that a strong family influence over a business, may stimulate family firms to choose a family outsider as a business leader. Therefore, the key contribution of this study is contextualizing the response to an ongoing succession debate. This study investigates the strategic choices of companies in the first generation of ownership operating in Poland, which serves as an example of a post-transition economy. While the characteristics of this economic environment may be unique, the authors discuss how the surprising findings may add to the understanding of the general succession processes present in private enterprises.

This research investigates the introduction of accounting practices into small family businesses, based on socioemotional wealth theory.

A multiple-case study was conducted gathering data through interviews and documents (proprietary and public). The sample included six businesses (five Mexican and one American) from different manufacturing and service industries.

It was found that, although owners control the implementation of accounting practices, others (including family employees, non-family employees and external experts) at times propose practices. The owner’s control can be relaxed, or even eliminated, as the result of proposals from some family employees. However, the degree of influence of family employees is not linked to the closeness of the family relationship, but rather to the owners’ perceived competence of the family employee, indicating an interaction between competence and experience on one side, and family ties on the other.

First, the owners chose which documentary data to provide and who was accessible for interviews, potentially biasing findings. Second, the degree of influence family employees can exert might change over time. Third, the study included a limited number of interviews, which can increase the risk of bias. Finally, all firms studied were still managed by the founder. It is possible that small family businesses that have undergone a succession process might incorporate accounting practices differently.

Organizations promoting the implementation of managerial accounting practices should be aware that, in addition to the owner, some family employees and external experts could influence business practices. Accountants already providing accounting services to small family business are also a good source for proposing managerial accounting practices

This study contributes to theory in four ways. First, it expands socioemotional theory to include the perceived competence of the family employee as a potential moderator in the decision-making process. Second, it categorizes the actors who can influence managerial accounting practices in small family businesses. Third, it further refines the role of these actors, based on their degree of influence. Fourth, it proposes a model that describes the introduction of managerial accounting practices in small family business.

Although family business literature acknowledges that family firms owners are motivated by a set of socioemotional wealth (SEW) goals along with firm-centric business goals, yet a consistently predictable pattern of relationship between SEW and financial wealth is yet to be discerned. The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model based on the stakeholder approach to suggest that family commitment mediates the association between the dimensions of SEW and firm performance.

A set of hypotheses are proposed that are tested using structural equation modeling with data collected from 357 medium to large sized privately held family firms in Bangladesh. The data analysis is done with SmartPLS (v.3.2).

The results indicate that family commitment partially mediates the relationships between family control and influence, family identification, emotional attachment and renewal of family bonds through dynastic succession and firm performance. The only non-significant relationship was between binding social ties and firm performance. The results provide a more nuanced understanding of the link between SEW goals and firm performance, and present important implications for theory and practice.

The cross-sectional nature of the study exposes it to the specter of common method bias despite the fact that procedural remedies were initiated to minimize the impact of such occurrence. A longitudinal study with data obtained from multiple individuals at different levels of the organization would possibly yield more robust findings. Furthermore, in the absence of a multi-country and multi-sector analysis, a broad generalization of the findings may not be feasible.

The knowledge that family identity, emotional attachment and renewal of family bonds through dynastic succession may be leveraged to enhance the commitment of subsequent generation of family firm owners to the firm that may be pertinent to incumbents who desire to see their successors more engaged in the family enterprise. Furthermore, knowing that excessive focus on family control over the firm leads to negative outcomes is also pertinent to family firm leaders.

Survival of family businesses is vital to the global economy as one of the primary drivers of global GDP growth and source of new employment. Policy makers can benefit from the findings of this study to customize policies that take into cognizance the importance of SEW owners of family firms and the fact that some of these SEW goals actually benefit the firm in terms of enhanced commitment to the enterprise and consequently superior firm performance.

The role of family commitment as a mediator between SEW and firm performance has not been dominant in the literature. By providing a finer-grained understanding of how family commitment accounts for the relationship between family-centric non-economic goals such as SEW and firm-centric goals such as business performance, the study presents a theoretical link between sociomemotional wealth and financial wealth in the context of private family firms.

This paper aims to study firms’ attitudes toward using sustainability reporting for facilitating raising external capital and the effect of the ultimate controlling owner on disclosure.

A disclosure index is constructed on the basis of sustainability reports, for a sample of 230 Italian listed firms. Empirical analysis is based on panel data models.

Firms are more prone to disclose when they are planning to issue equity/bonds. Family control does not affect disclosure in the case of bond issues, but it has a moderating effect in the case of equity issuance. A family CEO, increasing the family’s sense of identification with the business, improves disclosure.

Family ownership is the most viable measure to assess its socioemotional wealth (SEW). This assesses only the dimension related to family control and influence but it does not take into account other aspects of SEW. This study focuses on the relationship between disclosure and financing choices; it does not analyze the relationship between disclosure and success of equity/bond issues.

Family firms should improve their sustainability reporting, especially for firms operating in environmentally sensitive industries. Sustainability reports could play an effective role as a control mechanism in a firm’s behavior toward the environment, society, its employees and consumers.

The paper contributes to the studies on sustainability, showing that the nature of ultimate controlling owners and firms’ financing decisions affect disclosure. Moreover, it contributes to family firms’ literature, shedding light on the effect of the family control and sense of identification with the firm on disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the existing, yet limited, literature on the influence of ownership concentration and family control on the demands for high-quality audits. This study focusses on an emerging market, namely, Indonesia, where ownership concentration and family control are relatively higher than those in developed markets.

The sample consists of 787 firm-year observations of public firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. Following prior studies, a firm is considered using a higher quality audit when its external auditor is one of the Big 4 audit firms. Logistic regressions are employed to test research hypotheses.

Empirical evidence obtained reveals that firms with higher ownership concentration are more likely to hire a Big 4 auditor. Hence, in such firms, high-quality audits are employed to mitigate agency issues. However, when the controlling shareholder is a family, the association between ownership concentration and the demands for high-quality auditors turns negative, implying that family-controlled firms tend to sustain opaqueness gains by hiring lower quality auditors.

Previous empirical studies examining the influence of ownership concentration and family control on auditor choice are relatively limited in the literature and are heavily focussed on developed economies. In addition, the present study is one of the first to investigate the association between family control and auditor choice in the context of a developing economy.

There is a growing interest in understanding family firms’ strategic behavior using the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective. This study explores how family SEW dimensions influence non-family managers’ attitudes toward risk in the context of product innovation. This study also examines whether managerial risk-taking mediates the relationship between SEW and product innovation.

The study uses a sample of 150 family firms in the United Arab Emirates and collects data from family owners and non-family managers via self-administered questionnaires. The study uses SmartPLS structural equation modeling to test the conceptual model and the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate that multidimensional SEW influences non-family managers’ risk-taking behavior in different magnitudes and directions, thus impacting firms’ product innovation. Moreover, risk-taking partially mediates the relationship between SEW dimensions and product innovation.

While product innovation could be seen as a loss scenario for family firms due to the potential loss of SEW, growth, continuity and reputation outweighed the desire to maintain control for the firms in this sample. Thus, these firms encourage non-family managers to take risks in product innovation.