A Far-Reaching Parental Love? Co-Governance of Intergenerational Succession and Innovation Activities in Chinese Family Firms

Zhenduo Zhu and Yuanfei Kang

Management and Organization Review, 2022, vol. 18, issue 2, 358-394

Abstract: Motivated by the research gap on intergenerational succession dynamics of family firms, this study examines the effects of initiating intergenerational succession on firms' innovation activities. We propose that initiation of intra-family succession can result in founder–successor co-governance that represents a strategic transition to the succession and incorporates the two conflicting yet complementary directions of change and continuity. Grounded in the theory of altruism, we suggest that co-governance will positively affect firms' innovation activities and that this positive link is contingent on the idiosyncratic intra-family relationships of kinship type, age difference, and gender difference between the founder and the successor. Furthermore, we posit that co-governance will lead to a flow of resources to low risk, rather than more inventive but higher risk, innovations. Based on the unbalanced panel data of 4,694 firm-year observations in our sample from listed Chinese family firms during the 2006–2015 period, empirical analysis supports our hypotheses and confirms that when examining family firms' innovation, there is a need to take the heterogeneity of the intra-family governance structure more fully into consideration. 针对家族企业代际传承动态性研究的不足，本研究探讨了家族企业代际传承对其创新活动的影响。我们认为，家族内部传承的启动会导致创始人和继任者的跨代共治，这种共治方式代表了传承的战略过渡，使企业既保持连续性又有变化性。基于利他主义理论，我们认为跨代共治会对企业的创新活动产生积极的影响，但其影响程度取决于创始者和继任者之间特殊的亲属关系、年龄差异和性别差异。此外，我们假设跨代共治将导致资源流向低风险的创新，而不是更具创造性但风险更高的创新。我们对2006-2015年中国4694个上市家族企业年度的非均衡面板数据进行了分析，结果支持了我们的假设，并证实了在研究家族企业创新时，有必要更充分地考虑到家庭内部治理结构的异质性。

Date: 2022
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