While revealing a family firm’s identity can enhance the firm’s appeal to customers and employees and positively affect firm performance, many family firms decide not to portray a family firm image. Until now, we have not had a clear understanding of the factors that determine whether family businesses intentionally project their family firm identity to their external stakeholders. As this decision may affect a family firm’s competitive positioning and its prospects for continuity, it is important to understand the family logic within this decision-making process. Building on stakeholder theory arguments, we examine how family-related factors (e.g., family involvement, transgenerational succession intention and family-centered noneconomic goals) influence the extent to which a dominant family coalition leverages its family image on the company’s website. Our results, which originate from survey research and content analysis of the websites of 340 Dutch family firms, reveal the mechanisms that regulate this process. In particular, we show that transgenerational succession intention and family-centered noneconomic goals serially and double mediate the family involvement–family firm image relationship.

揭示家族企业的身份可以增强企业对客户和员工的吸引力并积极影响企业绩效，但许多家族企业决定不刻画家族企业的形象。到目前为止，我们对决定家族企业是否有意将其家族企业形象投射给外部利益相关者的因素还没有一个清晰的认识。由于此决策可能会影响家族企业的竞争地位及其连续性的前景，因此在决策过程中了解家族逻辑很重要。在利益相关者理论论证的基础上，我们研究与家庭相关的因素（例如，家庭参与，跨代继承意图和以家庭为中心的非经济目标）影响了主导的家庭联盟利用公司网站上的家庭形象的程度。我们的结果源自对340家荷兰家族企业网站的调查研究和内容分析，揭示了调节这一过程的机制。特别是，我们表明，跨代继承意图和以家庭为中心的非经济目标是家庭参与与家庭企业形象关系的连续和双重中介。