Would Family Firms Approaching Succession Prioritize Innovation Investment or Empire Building? A Temporal SEW Perspective
从时间性社会情感财富视角出发，发现中国家族企业在传承临近时会减少研发投入、增加资产投资，且继承人准备和兄弟姐妹竞争会分别弱化和强化这一效应。
This study develops a temporal socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective to examine how family firms’ strategic decisions shift as intergenerational succession approaches. Integrating SEW perspective with temporal construal theory, we argue that perceived proximity to succession triggers a shift from aspiration-based to temporal-needs-based SEW, reducing the salience of long-term benefits such as innovation while increasing the appeal of short-term concrete actions such as asset investment. Using data on pre-succession Chinese family firms, we find that firms approaching succession reduce R&D investment while increasing asset investment over time. Successor preparation weakens, while sibling competition strengthens, these effects. Our findings highlight the importance of temporal distance to succession in shaping SEW priorities and offer new insights into heterogeneity among family firms.