Title: Exploring the side effects of socio-emotional wealth. A multilevel analysis approach to the dysfunctional dynamics in family business succession

Authors: Filippo Ferrari

Addresses: Department of Management, University of Bologna, Italy

Abstract: Current literature highlights that family firms have non-economic goals, pursuing socio-emotional wealth (SEW), such as the desire to preserve business continuity and involving the next generation in family business. However, in pursuing non-economic advantages family firms also sustain non-economic costs, on individual, family group, and organisational levels. By adopting a qualitative protocol, this study investigated a sample of eight family firms, unveiling the roots of dysfunctional patterns resulting from business transmission specifically. Furthermore, findings highlight the strength of a multilevel approach in providing empirical evidence to support the idea that striving for non-economic goals could be a myopic behaviour, resulting in undesired long-term effects for generations involved in a business transmission process.

Keywords: family firms; business succession; socio-emotional wealth; SEW; multilevel analysis; dysfunctional patterns.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2020.106943

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2020 Vol.40 No.1, pp.128 - 146

Received: 03 Feb 2018
Accepted: 26 Apr 2019
Published online: 28 Apr 2020 *

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