Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate R&D investments in family firms.

Design/methodology/approach

The socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective, considered as a dominant paradigm in the family business field, is the theoretical framework used to report different behaviors ascertained within family firms. This paper focuses on two dimensions of the SEW, namely, family control and influence and family identity. A suspected moderating role played by the firm’s life cycle stage on the dimensions is also investigated using panel data. To analyze the results, this paper uses the Smart PLS software on secondary data collected for 76 German family firms.

Findings

The empirical results reveal a negative influence of SEW on R&D investments. The prominent effect of the family control and influence dimension on R&D is higher in the first part of a firm life cycle.

Research limitations/implications

The analysis of this study is subject to several caveats. First, to measure the R&D investment, this paper used R&D intensity computed as the total annual R&D expenses by total sales. Except for the fact that the use of proxies received several criticizes from scholars (Berrone et al., 2012) claiming how they do not directly relate to the essence of the dimensions measured. Second, this paper used two out of five FIBER dimensions only in the study. This paper took the right direction, but still, the complexity of SEW may not be fully captured following this approach (Berrone et al., 2012).

Originality/value

This study could be considered as an important extension of prior research investigating R&D in family firms. The authors provide a valid empirical construct, the FIBER scale, to capture non-monotonic behaviors in family firms and an enlargement of the family firms and innovation management field of research.

中文翻译：

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家庭和研发投资

目的

本研究的目的是调查家族企业的研发投资。

设计/方法/方法

社会情感财富（SEW）视角被认为是家族企业领域的主导范式，是用于报告家族企业内部确定的不同行为的理论框架。本文主要关注 SEW 的两个维度，即家庭控制和影响以及家庭认同。还使用面板数据调查了公司生命周期阶段对维度的怀疑调节作用。为了分析结果，本文使用 Smart PLS 软件收集了 76 家德国家族企业的二手数据。

发现

实证结果揭示了 SEW 对研发投资的负面影响。家族控制和影响维度对研发的显着影响在企业生命周期的第一阶段更高。

研究限制/影响

这项研究的分析有几个注意事项。首先，为了衡量研发投入，本文采用研发强度计算为年度研发费用总额除以总销售额。除了代理的使用受到学者的一些批评（Berrone等人，2012 年）声称它们与测量维度的本质没有直接关系。其次，本文仅在研究中使用了五分之二的 FIBER 维度。本文采取了正确的方向，但是，采用这种方法可能无法完全捕捉 SEW 的复杂性（Berrone等人，2012 年）。

原创性/价值

这项研究可以被认为是先前研究家族企业研发的重要延伸。作者提供了一个有效的实证结构，即 FIBER 量表，以捕捉家族企业中的非单调行为以及家族企业和创新管理研究领域的扩大。