The Impact of Socioemotional Wealth on Decline-Stemming Strategies of Family Firms

Abstract

Calling upon stakeholder theory and the socioemotional wealth (SEW) literature, we investigate how SEW impacts the decline-stemming strategies of family firms. Drawing on a recent conceptualization of SEW, we validate a two-dimensional measurement of the construct using a content analysis technique. Our empirical test on a sample of publicly traded family firms in need of turnaround suggests that the strategic preferences of family firms change depending upon the type of SEW (extended vs. restricted) the owning family values the most. The fine-grained characterization of SEW adopted in this study accounts for within-family-firm differences and thus enables the reconciliation of conflicting findings in the literature.