To Merge, Sell, or Liquidate? Socioemotional Wealth, Family Control, and the Choice of Business Exit
研究家族控制企业与非家族企业在面临财务困境时如何选择退出方式（合并、出售或清算），发现家族企业更倾向于合并以保护社会情感财富，而非家族企业更看重财务回报。
We take the perspective that considering the affective motives of dominant owners is essential to understanding business exit. Drawing on a refinement of behavioral agency theory, we argue that family-controlled firms are less likely than non-family-controlled firms to exit and tend to endure increased financial distress to avoid losses to the family’s socioemotional wealth (SEW) embodied in the firm. Yet, when confronted with different exit options and when performance heuristics suggest that exit is unavoidable, family firms are more likely to exit via merger, which we argue saves some SEW, although it is less satisfactory financially. In contrast, nonfamily firms are more likely to exit via sale or dissolution, options that are more prone to offer higher financial returns than mergers. Family and nonfamily firms thus show different orders of exit options. We find support for these arguments in a longitudinal matched sample of privately held firms.