Preserving socioemotional wealth in family firms: Asset or liability? The moderating role of business context

We ask whether choices aimed at preserving socioemotional wealth (SEW) represent an asset or a liability in family-controlled firms. Specifically, we consider one major SEW-preserving mechanism-having as chief executive officer (CEO) a member of the controlling family-and hypothesize that this choice is (1) an asset in business contexts, such as industrial districts, in which tacit rules and social norms are relatively more important, but (2) a potential liability in contexts like stock exchange markets, where formal regulations and transparency principles take center stage.