Religion and succession intention - Evidence from Chinese family firms

Abstract

Family business succession is a vital issue in corporate finance and management. Drawing from corporate governance perspective in finance and socio-emotional wealth approach in management, this paper reveals the interesting relationship between religion and family business succession intention. Using nationwide family firm survey data, we find that family firm founders' religiosity is conducive to their succession intention. Family firm founders' religiosity and family firm's socioemotional wealth interactively strengthen management succession intention, but not ownership succession intention. We also find that Eastern religious beliefs, especially Buddhism, strengthen the religiosity-succession relation in Chinese family firms.