Author(s)

Xiaohua She, Haili Ren

Corresponding Author

Xiaohua She

Abstract

With the first batch of Chinese family entrepreneurs ages, family businesses are at the peak of intergenerational succession. As a significant event leading to the adjustment of firm governance structure, intergenerational succession has an impact on overseas business performance. To explore this impact, this paper takes family firms listed in China from 2009 to 2020 as the observation objects and establishes a multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) model. Regression result indicates that intergenerational succession has a negative impact on overseas business performance. This paper further discusses the influencing mechanism by exploring the moderating effect of the education level and the mediating effect of innovation investment. The results confirm that the educational attainment of successors plays a negative moderating role, and the mediating effect of innovation investment exists.

Keywords

Intergenerational succession; Family business; Overseas business performance; Multi-period DID