Thomas Zellweger

Our quantitative study investigates the determinants of internal versus external exit routes in family firms. Building on information asymmetry theory, we examine how an owner's inferior knowledge about the abilities of potential external entrants (in contrast to family internal successors) renders a family internal transfer more likely. This information asymmetry, however, can be mitigated by activities such as owners' screening and transfer candidates' signaling efforts to reveal the candidates' abilities. Our data exhibits a positive effect of signaling and an inverted U-shaped effect of screening on the probability of external exit routes. Firm age, as a driver of emotional attachment, weakens these effects.

Personal and motivational patterns of intentional founders have been researched in great depth; however, antecedents to career choices of intentional successors have been conspicuously missing in entrepreneurship research. By drawing on theory of planned behavior, we investigate how intentional founders, successors, and employees differ in terms of locus of control and entrepreneurial self-efficacy as well as independence and innovation motives. We find that transitive likelihood of career intent depends on degree of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the independence motive. Unexpectedly, we see that high levels of internal locus of control lead to a preference of employment, which challenges traditional entrepreneurship research and suggests that the feasibility of an entrepreneurial career path does not automatically make it desirable. Our findings suggests that students with family business background are pessimistic about being in control, but optimistic about their efficacy to pursue an entrepreneurial career

In our quantitative study we investigate the antecedents of two distinct exit routes. Building on information asymmetry theory, we discuss that the owner's inferior knowledge about the ability of potential family external (in contrast to family internal) successors renders a family internal transition more likely. However, this information asymmetry can be mitigated by activities such as owners' screening and successors' signaling efforts to unveil the successor's ability. Our data exhibits a positive effect of signaling and an inverted u-shaped effect of screening on the probability of an external succession. Socioemotional wealth, generated by long ownership duration, moderates these effects.

The present text examines how the organizational input variable "family" and the financial output variable "return" are interrelated. This question is crucial since there are serious doubts brought forward by Schulze et al. (2003) whether family firms really exhibit the ideal precondition of low agency costs as hypothesized by Fama and Jensen (1983a and 1983b). Schulze et al. (2003) find that family firms suffer from costly agency conflicts induced by altruism between family principals (e.g. parents) and family agents (e.g. children). Hence there is a need for research that examines the question whether family influence on a firm is boosting or hampering the financial performance.