Management Innovations in Family Firms after Succession: Evidence from Japanese SMEs

In this paper, we examine whether family firms are more or less likely to foster management innovation, expanded incumbent business activities, or make advance to new business fields after CEO succession than non-family firms. Using data of 1,149 SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) obtained from a corporate survey in Japan, we find that the new CEOs of family firms are not systematically less or more innovative than their counterparts in non-family firms. However, we also find that this zero effect of family ownership on innovation likelihood is the result of a negative impact of professional successors and a positive impact of heir successors. Finally, we show that access to intangible family assets increases the innovativeness of heir successors and decreases that of professional successors.