关键词: 代际传承, 家族企业, 创新效率, 媒体关注

Abstract: As a major organizational form of Chinese private enterprises, family firms are an unignorable group of enterprises in the development of the national economy. After over forty years of reform and opening up, Chinese family firms are facing the dual challenges of transgenerational succession and innovative transformation. As a governance mechanism outside of legal and administrative enforcement, the media has an essential impact on the decision-making of corporate management. Against this backdrop, the impact of media attention on intergenerational innovation in family firms needs to be further identified. Moreover, current research on intergenerational innovation in family firms tends to focus on the scale of inputs or outputs, and still lacks attention to innovation efficiency. From the perspective of innovation efficiency, it is of practical significance to promote the rational allocation of innovation resources in family firms when resources are limited during the succession period. Therefore, this paper explores the impact of transgenerational succession on the innovation efficiency of family firms as well as the contextual effects of media attention. In the extended studies, this paper further analyses the effects of different media sentiments on the outcomes and the possible mechanisms of their effects.
Based on the socioemotional wealth theory, this paper argues that the impact of transgenerational succession on the innovation efficiency of family firms may be two-fold. On the one hand, family firms are more likely to focus on avoiding the loss of socioemotional wealth during the succession period, thus forming a strategic reference point for maintaining family control, which embodies restricted socioemotional wealth, and tend to be less willing to innovate in their firms. On the other hand, family firms during the succession period are also likely to optimize the allocation of innovation resources with a view to obtaining efficient innovation outputs under resource-limited conditions, thus enhancing innovation efficiency. In the context of media attention, on the one hand, media attention stimulates the “social identity” of the management of family firms through the “reputation mechanism”, and enhances the willingness of family firms to engage in innovative activities during the succession period. On the other hand, media attention promotes the optimal allocation of innovation resources in family firms through the “information dissemination mechanism”, which enhances the ability to engage in innovation activities.
To verify the above hypotheses, this paper selects a sample of Chinese listed family firms from 2009 to 2021 to study the contextual effects and mechanisms of media attention on transgenerational succession and the innovation efficiency of family firms. The researchresults are as follows: (1) The average innovation efficiency of family firms in the transgenerational succession period is significantly lower that of family firms in the non-transgenerational succession stage; (2) Media attention can help enhance the innovation efficiency of family firms in the succession period, and this contextual effect is more pronounced in family firms that are in regions with high levels of marketization and high levels of information transparency; (3) Extended research finds that thecontextual effect of media attention is persistent and only positive media reports have significant moderating effects; (4) Mechanism test finds that improving the internal control quality is one of the paths through which media attention promotes the innovation efficiency of family firms in the succession period.
The research contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) This paper explores the relationship between transgenerational succession and family firm innovation in the context of media attention, which helps to bridge the contradictory viewpoints of current research. (2) This paper takes innovation efficiency as a measure of the innovation level of family firms in the context of high-quality development, which is a useful refinement and supplement to existing research on intergenerational innovation in family firms. (3) This paper enriches the research findings on the role of media in corporate governance theory. (4) This paper validates the synergistic governance role of media attention in intergenerational innovation in family firms, which helps family firms to successfully pass through the succession period and achieve innovation-driven high-quality development.

Key words: Transgenerational Succession, Family Firm, Innovation Efficiency, Media Attention