a key role in formulation and implementation of strategies, including managerial compensation decisions.
We contribute to the family firm literature by providing further insights into the family and business interface. Our empirical findings imply that despite their potential economic benefits, family ownership, management, and intra-family succession expectations reduce the probability that incentives will be offered to non-family managers because such incentives are perceived to be inconsistent with the preservation of the family’s socioemotional wealth. This is an important theoretical contribution because unlike diversification and R&D (Chrisman and Patel, 2012; Gomez-Mejia et al., 2010), incentive compensation schemes need only be paid when warranted by performance and therefore have low to no downside economic risk for the firm. Thus, we suggest that choices that reflect a preference for socioemotional wealth may not only be a function of decision framing and loss aversion as implied by previous research (e.g. Gomez-Mejia et al., 2007, 2010) but also by the size of the economic pay-offs that might be available. Apparently, even relatively certain economic benefits are discounted if the possibility of a loss of socioemotional wealth is present. Consequently, our theoretical arguments and findings confirm previous research and theory and draw attention to new avenues for future work on the non-economic and economic goals that underlying decisions regarding managerial compensation and other strategic issues in family firms.
We proceed in the following manner. First, we outline the theoretical model and hypotheses. Second, we present our methodology, empirical model, and results. Third, we conclude with our research directions for theory and practice.