A transgenerational leadership transition is one of the most critical events in the life cycle of family firms. Drawing upon the myopic loss aversion (MLA) perspective, we argue that outgoing leaders and other company stakeholders tend to closely watch the later-generation successors immediately after a transgenerational succession, and thus the successors will focus on short-term developments and invest less in R&D activities. Employing the difference-in-differences approach, we find empirical support for our argument that transgenerational succession decreases R&D intensity. The negative effect of transgenerational succession is more pronounced when the later-generation successors suffer from a higher level of MLA.

跨代领导层过渡是家族企业生命周期中最关键的事件之一。借鉴近视损失厌恶 (MLA) 的观点，我们认为即将离任的领导者和其他公司利益相关者往往会在跨代继任后立即密切关注后代继任者，因此继任者将专注于短期发展，而较少投资于研发活动。采用差异中的差异方法，我们找到了经验支持我们的论点，即跨代继承会降低研发强度。当后代继承者遭受更高水平的MLA时，跨代继承的负面影响更加明显。