Management Review ›› 2025, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (10): 115-125.

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship Management • Previous Articles    

Research on the Impact of Family Executives’ Kinship-Order-Pattern on Firm’s Innovative Performance

He Kaiyan1, Chen Jianlin2, Zheng Jiahua3, Liu Tianrong4, Yang Chenyi2   

  1. 1. School of Management, Wuzhou University, Wuzhou 543000;
    2. School of Accounting, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou 510320;
    3. Audit Bureau of Huilai County, Jieyang City, Guangdong Province, Jieyang 522000;
    4. Guangdong Shared Service Branch, Guangdong EPEC Environmental Protection Industry Co., Ltd., Guangzhou 510000
  • Received:2022-10-10 Published:2025-11-18

Abstract: The differential order pattern is an important feature of traditional Chinese culture, and innovation and transformation are the major challenges faced by family businesses. This paper takes China’s listed family businesses from 2008 to 2018 as a research sample to explore the impact of family executives’ kinship order pattern on the innovation performance of family businesses. This paper draws the following conclusions: (1) the family executives’ kinship order pattern can improve the innovation performance of family businesses, (2) the institutional environment weakens the positive relationship between the family executives’ kinship order pattern and the firm’s innovation performance, (3) the parental authority helps to strengthen the positive relationship between the family executives’ kinship order pattern and the firm’s innovation performance, and (4) through the mechanism test, it is found that the family executives’ kinship order pattern improves the innovation performance of family businesses by alleviating agency problems and financing constraints, (5) further research shows that in high-tech enterprises, the positive impact of the family executives’ kinship pattern on the firm’s innovation performance is more significant, and the family-shareholders’ kinship pattern is significantly positively correlated with the family-executives’ kinship pattern. This paper is based on the local culture of China, which is helpful to expand the research perspective of family business innovation.

Key words: family-business, family executives, kinship, differential-order-pattern, innovative performance