We investigate family firms’ speed and degree of compliance with board independence requirements and how willingness and ability affect family firms’ compliance patterns. Using a longitudinal sample of Indian publicly traded firms during a transitional period of corporate governance reforms, we find that family firms are slower to comply with board independence requirements than non-family firms. Family firms’ compliance speed is even slower as agency costs increase. We also document that family firms are prone to symbolically comply with board independence requirements, as independent directors in family firms are less engaged than their counterparts in non-family firms. Family firms’ symbolic compliance is even more salient when family firms possess larger agency problems and greater resource constraints. Our results also point to a complementary relationship between family firms’ willingness and ability to comply, as family firms with greater agency costs and larger resource constraints are among the slowest to comply and are also most likely to comply superficially. Overall, we conclude that family firms’ internal logic, agency costs and resource constraints jointly affect their compliance patterns.

中文翻译：

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延迟与脱钩：家族企业遵守董事会独立性要求

我们调查了家族企业遵守董事会独立性要求的速度和程度，以及意愿和能力如何影响家族企业的合规模式。使用公司治理改革过渡时期的印度上市公司的纵向样本，我们发现家族企业在遵守董事会独立性要求方面比非家族企业慢。随着代理成本的增加，家族企业的合规速度更慢。我们还记录了家族企业倾向于象征性地遵守董事会独立性要求，因为家族企业的独立董事的参与度低于非家族企业的独立董事。当家族企业存在更大的代理问题和更大的资源约束时，家族企业的象征性服从就更加突出。我们的研究结果还指出家族企业的合规意愿和能力之间存在互补关系，因为具有较高代理成本和较大资源约束的家族企业是合规最慢的，也最有可能在表面上合规。总的来说，我们得出结论，家族企业的内部逻辑、代理成本和资源约束共同影响其合规模式。