Corporate Diplomacy and Family Firm Longevity
从交易成本经济学和企业外交视角，探讨家族企业如何利用社会资本实现长寿，指出企业外交的三个步骤（熟悉、接受、参与）能帮助家族企业克服分裂偏见，增强内外部社会资本，提升长期生存概率。
We discuss family firm longevity building upon a new conceptual lens, informed by transaction cost economics (TCE), but augmented with corporate diplomacy thinking. Family firms, because of their superior foundation of bonding social capital (interpreted here as a firm-specific, transaction cost-reducing governance mechanism), have an intrinsic advantage vis-à-vis nonfamily firms with regards to utilizing network ties supportive of longevity. Most family firms, however, fail to leverage effectively this governance tool to achieve longevity, due to bifurcation bias (BB), that is, the unchecked prioritization of assets and relationships that hold affective value for the family. We propose that corporate diplomacy, through its three process steps, familiarization, acceptance, and engagement, can help the family firm augment its baseline reservoir of social capital, and allows improved economizing on contracting challenges that endanger its survival. Externally, corporate diplomacy helps economizing on expressions of BB in relationships with outside stakeholders, thus augmenting bridging social capital. Internally, it can address biased treatment of family versus nonfamily human assets, thereby augmenting bonding social capital. Intergenerationally, corporate diplomacy supports access to, and improved reliance upon the firm’s social capital by next generation family members. The family firms that focus on corporate diplomacy processes and the resulting social capital creation greatly improve their chances of longevity.