Family Ownership and Impression Management: An Integrated Approach
研究了家族所有权与印象管理之间的U型关系，发现代理冲突和社会情感财富动机共同影响这一关系，对理解家族企业信息披露行为有参考价值。
According to agency theory, impression management is lower in family-owned firms because of reduced agency I conflicts. However, when family owners are present, agency I conflicts are superseded by agency II conflicts between controlling and minority shareholders, leading to a positive association between impression management and family ownership. Moreover, family owners have distinct goals related to the preservation of socioemotional wealth (SEW) that may influence agency conflicts. We formalize these countervailing forces by developing an integrated theoretical framework that considers both agency I and agency II conflicts and how they interact with SEW-related motives. We hypothesize that the coexistence of agency I and agency II conflicts in family-owned firms leads to a U-shaped association between family ownership and impression management. We also expect that this U-shaped association is flatter when family influence on the board is stronger and SEW motives shape more corporate choices. We test our predictions by analyzing the letters to shareholders of 77 Italian-listed firms from 2008 to 2015. The results confirm our expectations and hold when we use instrumental variable estimation, alternative proxies to capture SEW motives, and impression management measures.