مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد اهداف خانواده محور، نمایندگی هیئت مدیره خانواده و تامین مالی بدهی – اسپرینگر 2018

Introduction

Family firms differ from nonfamily firms in their greater propensity to assess strategic decisions in relation to both economic and noneconomic goals, linked to the creation of financial wealth (FW) and socioemotional wealth (SEW) (Gómez-Mejía et al. 2007; Gómez-Mejía et al. 2011; Kotlar et al. 2017). In the family firm context, such noneconomic goals often revolve around the family and concern continued family control, family harmony next generation succession, and employment of family members. These family-centered goals are acknowledged to drive the behavior of family firms (Gómez-Mejía et al. 2007; Koropp et al. 2013b; Kotlar and De Massis 2013; Lyagoubi 2006). In the SEW perspective, such variations in goal orientation explain the differences between family and nonfamily firms, and among family firms, in their pursuit of a range of strategic decisions, including R&D investments (Chrisman and Patel 2012; Patel and Chrisman 2014), international diversification (GómezMejía et al. 2010), acquisitions (Gómez-Mejía et al. 2015), and financing (see, for example, Cirillo et al. 2015; Leitterstorf and Rau 2014; Michiels and Molly 2017). With respect to the latter, prior research sheds light on how SEW influences certain financing decisions in family firms (Jain and Shao 2014; Kotlar et al. 2017; Leitterstorf and Rau 2014; Tappeiner et al. 2012; Fernando et al. 2014; Landry et al. 2013; Vandemaele and Vancauteren 2015). However, the relationship between family-centered goals and the use of debt financing in family firms has scarcely been studied. This is rather surprising since previous research finds differences in the use of debt financing between family and nonfamily firms (e.g., Blanco-Mazagatos et al. 2007; González et al. 2013; Burgstaller and Wagner 2015) and within family firms (e.g., Amore et al. 2011; Molly et al. 2010, 2012; Koropp et al. 2013a, b). Moreover, debt financing is the most important source of external financing for family firms (Romano et al. 2001) and hence warrants further research efforts. In this paper, we examine family heterogeneity with respect to the variation in family-centered goals as a starting point to explain differences in debt financing among family firms. Given that the firm’s financing policy is usually established at the board level, we expect the relation between family-centered goals and capital structure to be mediated by the family’s discretion or ability to influence board decisions. Hence, the second objective of our study is to test the possible mediating effect of family representation on the board of directors (henceforth BOD or board) on the relationship between familycentered goals and debt financing in family firms. In this way, our study extends current knowledge on two important aspects of family firm heterogeneity, namely, family-centered goals and board composition (Chrisman et al. 2007; Chua et al. 2012). The third objective is to explore whether this mediating effect is more evident for certain types of debt. While most studies only focus on the total debt rate, here, we also distinguish between types of leverage (financial and nonfinancial debt) and debt maturity structure (shortterm and long-term debt). The main contribution of this study to family business literature lies in broadening our understanding and applicability of the SEW perspective in the unique context of family firm financial decision-making (Fernando et al. 2014; Koropp et al. 2014). We find that the relation between the owning family’s Bwillingness^ (i.e., their favorable disposition) to pursue family-centered goals and the firm’s debt rate is mediated by the owning family’s position on the board (i.e., their Bability^ or discretion to impose family-centered goals when making financing decisions).