The Effect of Transgenerational Control Intention on Family-Firm Performance: It Depends Who Pursues It

Christian Hoffmann, Peter Jaskiewicz, Torsten Wulf and James G. Combs

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2019, vol. 43, issue 3, 629-646

Abstract: Transgenerational control intention (TCI) is a pivotal characteristic of many family firms. Yet, it remains unclear whether TCI benefits family-firm performance by instilling a long-term view, or hurts performance by fueling harmful socioemotional wealth (SEW) goals. We posit that it depends who pursues it. When faced with TCI, family managers are known to suffer from cognitive biases that, we submit, do not similarly apply to nonfamily managers. Thus, only family managers harm performance when pursuing TCI. An empirical investigation of 107 private German family firms supports our theory; the effect of TCI on firm performance depends on who pursues it.

Keywords: Behavioral Agency/Prospect; Family Business; Performance; Professionalization; Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1042258717730025 (text/html)

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:sae:entthe:v:43:y:2019:i:3:p:629-646

DOI: 10.1177/1042258717730025

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().