The courage to choose! Primogeniture and leadership succession in family firms
Building on a unique dataset with information on the nuclear structure of entrepreneurial families, we integrate leadership succession into a socioemotional wealth (SEW) logic to test the antecedents and consequences of primogeniture vis-à-vis second- or subsequent born selection in family firm succession. Our findings suggest that appointing a family firstborn sibling is more likely when there is a high degree of SEW endowment and the family firm has pre-succession performance below aspiration levels.