The Ability and Willingness of Family Firms to Bribe: A Socioemotional Wealth Perspective

Shisong Jiang () and Yijie Min ()
Additional contact information
Shisong Jiang: Wuhan University
Yijie Min: Peking University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2023, vol. 184, issue 1, No 14, 237-254

Abstract: Abstract Extant research concludes that family firms are less likely to bribe due to reputation concerns. However, such conclusions are, to a certain extent, inconsistent with the intuition and observation that some family firms can be aggressive bribers. This study employs a restricted-extended framework of socioemotional wealth model to reconcile this inconsistency. We propose family management, on the one hand, results in reputation preservation willingness; while on the other hand, results in an abuse of trust between family members and superior ability to hide bribery secrets. Integrating the willingness and ability mechanisms leads to an inverted U-shaped relationship between family management and bribery. Further, family firm political connection and province-level anti-corruption investigation play moderation role on the inverted U-shaped main effect. An empirical analysis of Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2017 supports our hypotheses.

Keywords: Bribery; Family firm; Socioemotional wealth model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-022-05086-1 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:jbuset:v:184:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05086-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-022-05086-1

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

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