Shi Xiaofei, Tui Zhangjing, Zhou Xiaoyu
School of Business Administration, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 May 13;13:825223. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.825223. eCollection 2022.
"The prosperity of the population and son, the prosperity of the country" means that the more family members and male offspring, the more stable and prosperous the family foundation of future generations. This concept is deeply engraved in China's traditional culture, and affects the behavior and decision-making of the actual controller as a parent. Chinese family enterprises are facing urgent problems such as power transfer and leader replacement. Although some studies have paid attention to the relationship between children's characteristics and enterprise inheritance, they have not connected this relationship with the internal mechanism of successor selection. The existing theoretical research lacks in-depth analysis of the influence mechanism of children's characteristics on professional manager appointment. Therefore, we attempt to make up for this deficiency. Based on this, we take Chinese family listed companies from 2009 to 2019 as a sample to test the impact of the number and the gender structure of actual controllers' children on family enterprises' professional management. The study found that the number of children, especially the number of sons, will inhibit the professional operation of enterprises. This conclusion is still true after the robustness test. Further research found that compared with daughters, sons have a more significant impact on professional management. At the same time, the greater the ownership proportion of the actual controller, the stronger the correlation between children's characteristics and professional management. We not only studied the influencing factors of enterprise succession from the perspective of children's characteristics, but also enriched the organization theory in the context of family business, which is helpful to promote the benign evolution and healthy and sustainable development of enterprises.
“人丁兴旺，国家昌盛”意味着家庭成员和男性后代越多，后代的家庭根基就越稳固昌盛。这一观念深深铭刻在中国传统文化之中，并影响着作为家长的实际控制人的行为与决策。中国家族企业正面临权力交接和领导者更替等紧迫问题。尽管一些研究关注了子女特征与企业传承的关系，但并未将这种关系与继任者选择的内部机制联系起来。现有的理论研究缺乏对子女特征对职业经理人任用影响机制的深入分析。因此，我们试图弥补这一不足。基于此，我们以2009年至2019年的中国家族上市公司为样本，检验实际控制人子女数量及性别结构对家族企业职业化管理的影响。研究发现，子女数量，尤其是儿子数量，会抑制企业的职业化运营。经过稳健性检验后，这一结论依然成立。进一步研究发现，相较于女儿，儿子对职业化管理的影响更为显著。同时，实际控制人的持股比例越高，子女特征与职业化管理之间的相关性越强。我们不仅从子女特征角度研究了企业传承的影响因素，还丰富了家族企业背景下的组织理论，有助于推动企业的良性演变以及健康可持续发展。
