家族权利束锁定与家族企业创新——基于结构性工具控股家族企业的证据

Abstract

Controlling families, aiming for protection, management, and inheritance, are increasingly using structural tools to control their family businesses and consolidate the family's dispersed rights. Opening the black box of family business governance and analyzing how the internal allocation of rights affects family business decision-making has important theoretical and practical significance. Given the diverse goal systems of family business, this paper introduces the family business triangle theory to analyze the impact of structural tools on the innovation behavior of family business, thereby providing a new perspective for understanding family business governance practice. The study finds that structural tools significantly promote family business innovation, with decreasing financing constraint and increasing risk tolerance being key pathways. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the innovation-promoting effect is more pronounced in family businesses with deeper family management involvement, after generational succession, and with smaller asset size. Further analysis shows that the innovation-promoting effect is mainly reflected in high-quality rather than low-quality innovations. Additionally, the use of structural tools to control family business can effectively inhibit the reduction of family ownership and control. This research bridges theoretical frontiers with practical work on Chinese family business governance and provides important theoretical and empirical support for the formulation of policies related to family business governance and inheritance.