Abstract: Family succession promotes changes in corporate governance structure. From the perspective of excess control rights, this paper uses a sample of A-share listed family companies from 2008 to 2021 to study the impact of intergenerational succession on the degree of family over-appointent of directors. The study finds that intergenerational succession leads to a significant increase of family over-appointment of directors, especially for the family companies that are being taken over by their second generation and have less children or no male children of actual controller. Further analysis finds that the family over-appointment of directors in intergenerational succession is mainly supported by the hypothesis of risk dispersion effect rather than control enhancement effect. This paper not only supplements the related research on the governance structure of family business succession, but also enriches the theoretical understanding and empirical evidence of the risk dispersion effect of excess control rights, and has certain reference value for the governance mechanism arrangement of family business succession.

Key words: intergenerational succession, family over-appointment of directors, risk diversification effect, take-over stage, family children composition