Family-centered goals, family board representation, and debt financing

Vincent Molly (), Lorraine M. Uhlaner (), Alfredo De Massis () and Eddy Laveren ()
Additional contact information
Vincent Molly: KU Leuven
Lorraine M. Uhlaner: EDHEC Business School
Alfredo De Massis: Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Eddy Laveren: Antwerp Management School - Family Business Community

Small Business Economics, 2019, vol. 53, issue 1, No 13, 269-286

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the effect of both family-centered goals and family board representation (family member representation on the board of directors) on family firm capital structure. Based on a sample of 327 Belgian family SMEs, our findings show that family-centered goals indirectly affect the total debt rate through family board representation. More specifically, the results indicate that this mediating effect holds primarily for the short-term (vs. long-term) debt rate and for the financial (vs. nonfinancial) debt rate. Taken together, our findings suggest that the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective is relevant and fruitful to explain debt decisions in family firms. Our findings contribute to family business literature and enable scholars and practitioners to gain a better understanding of family firm capital structure decisions.

Keywords: Family business; Family-centered goals; Financing; Debt; Governance; Board of directors; Socioemotional wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 G32 L21 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-018-0058-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:53:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11187-018-0058-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-018-0058-9

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().