This study aims to explore the impact of nonprimogeniture succession on family business innovation investment decisions during intergenerational succession, focusing on how the role-expectation conflict between the successor’s family and social roles functions in this process. The research objective is to reveal the specific impact of nonprimogeniture succession on family business innovation investment and to propose corresponding countermeasures.
Based on role congruence theory, this study uses data from Chinese family business listed companies between 2008 and 2022 to examine the relationship between nonprimogeniture succession and family business innovation investment through ordinary least squares regression analysis.
Compared with primogeniture succession, nonprimogeniture succession results in a significant decrease in family businesses’ innovation investment. Further analysis reveals that this negative effect is more pronounced when the successor is a female successor, when the successor adopts a radical succession mode, and in regions where Confucianism exerts a profound influence.
The existing literature explores family firm innovation investment in second-generation succession through social-emotional wealth theory. This study analyses and verifies that differences in social role expectations and legitimacy needs triggered by the birth order of successors are important antecedent motives affecting innovation investment in family firms. Thus, it provides new explanatory variables for understanding the differential drivers of family firms’ innovation investment in second-generation succession scenarios. Furthermore, this paper shifts the explanatory logic of the birth order impact effect from the impact of birth order on individual character to its impact on individual identity legitimacy, enriching the literature on the economic consequences of birth order and expanding the application of the role congruence theory.
