Governance & succession · Original source
Tsu-Cheng Chou; Hsi-Peng Lu
The direct observation method is commonly used for data collection in family business case studies. Nevertheless, in research on family business succession that is mainly based on retrospective data, it is difficult to directly observe an event or situation at a given time. This paper thus first explores the application of observation data in the published research results of some family business case studies through a literature review. It then describes our observation methodology, i.e., sampling process, method, observation process, and reevaluation of our interview data, through a case study. Finally, the conclusion offers suggestions for using these observation methods, i.e., employing different types of observation, by considering running time and financial cost, familiarizing observers with various observation occasions, and seeking the assistance of relevant professionals for a research topic.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.
Governance & succession · Original source
Khoa Dang Duong; Hanh Thi Hong Nguyen; Phuc Huu Truong; Hoa Thanh Phan Le
This study examines the influence of investor attention and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) power on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within Vietnamese family businesses. Unlike most of the past literature, this study further investigates the potential moderating effects of CEOs’ power on the relationship between investor attention and CSR. Utilizing the dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), this study analyzes a dataset comprising 116 Vietnamese family businesses from 2005 to 2020. The findings reveal an inverted U-shape between CEO power and CSR within family businesses; meanwhile, investor attention demonstrates a negative impact on CSR. Moreover, the results report that CEO power is a moderating factor in the relationship between investor attention and CSR. These results are consistent with various theoretical frameworks, including agency theory, overinvestment, career concern, career horizon, and conflict-resolution hypotheses. Finally, our study offers management implications to foster the sustainable development of CSR within family businesses, particularly within emerging markets.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.
Governance & succession · Original source
Yujia Shao; Dechun Huang; Lelin Lv; Jie Yu
The diversified management ability of the non-family members in the top management teams (TMTs) can significantly increase the research and development (R&D) investment of the family firms. However, existing studies focus on family characteristics. To bridge the gap, this study explored the R&D investment propensity for family firms from the perspective of non-family members’ participation in TMTs. Based on the upper echelons and the socioemotional wealth theory, this paper incorporated the non-economic goals that influence strategic decisions on family firms into the analytical framework. According to the questionnaire data of Chinese private enterprises, the Tobit regression model was used to analyze the influence of family members on R&D investment decisions under non-economic goal orientations. The results indicated that the preference for control and influence among family members weakens the positive effect of non-family managers on R&D investment, while the preferences for status perception and social responsibility strengthen the positive effect.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.
Governance & succession · Original source
Stephan Dickert; Janet Kleber; Daniel Västfjäll; Paul Slovic
One of the puzzling phenomena in philanthropy is that people can show strong compassion for identified individual victims but remain unmoved by catastrophes that affect large numbers of victims. Two prominent findings in research on charitable giving reflect this idiosyncrasy: The (1) identified victim and (2) victim number effects. The first of these suggests that identifying victims increases donations and the second refers to the finding that people’s willingness to donate often decreases as the number of victims increases. While these effects have been documented in the literature, their underlying psychological processes need further study. We propose a model in which identified victim and victim number effects operate through different cognitive and affective mechanisms. In two experiments we present empirical evidence for such a model and show that different affective motivations (donor-focused vs. victim-focused feelings) are related to the cognitive processes of impact judgments and mental imagery. Moreover, we argue that different mediation pathways exist for identifiability and victim number effects.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.
Governance & succession · Original source
Leily Farrokhvar; Azadeh Ansari; Behrooz Kamali
Private giving represents more than three fourths of all U.S. charitable donations, about 2% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Private giving is a significant factor in funding the nonprofit sector of the U.S. economy, which accounts for more than 10% of total GDP. Despite the abundance of data available through tax forms and other sources, it is unclear which factors influence private donation, and a reliable predictive mechanism remains elusive. This study aims to develop predictive models to accurately estimate future charitable giving based on a set of potentially influential factors. We have selected several factors, including unemployment rate, household income, poverty level, population, sex, age, ethnicity, education level, and number of vehicles per household. This study sheds light on the relationship between donation and these variables. We use Stepwise Regression to identify the most influential variables among the available variables, based on which predictive models are developed. Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and machine learning techniques, including Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Support Vector Regression (SVR) are used to develop the predictive models. The results suggest that population, education level, and the amount of charitable giving in the previous year are the most significant, independent variables. We propose three predictive models (MLR, ANN, and SVR) and validate them using 10-fold cross-validation method, then evaluate the performance using 9 different measuring criteria. All three models are capable of predicting the amount of future donations in a given region with good accuracy. Based on the evaluation criteria, using a test data set, ANN outperforms SVR and MLR in predicting the amount of charitable giving in the following year.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.
Governance & succession · Original source
Hajdi Moche; Hulda Karlsson; Daniel Västfjäll
This study examines the identifiable victim effect (being more willing to help an identified victim than an unidentified), the singularity effect (i.e., being more willing to help a single identified victim than a group of identified victims), and unit asking (first asking donors for their willingness to donate for one unit and then asking for donations for multiple units) in charitable giving. In five studies (N = 7996), we vary the level of identifiability, singularity, and group size. We find that unit asking is making people more sensitive to the number of people in need. Further, while the level of identifiability influences affective reactions, this effect does not extend to donations and, thus, is not affected by unit asking. We do, however, find an “emotion asking effect” where asking donors to rate their affect before donating increase donation levels (compared to donors asked to rate affect after). Emotion asking was attenuated when combined with unit asking.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis translating the cited study into a bounded family-office decision protocol, with explicit evidence limits, responsible owners, records, measures and stopping conditions. Proposed practices have not been evaluated in a new study.
Governance & succession · Original source
Kai Zhang; Bin Cao; Ya Zhang; Yawen Han
Using the data of the 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this paper empirically tests the impact of the "Big Five" personality characteristics on household charitable donation behavior. The benchmark regression results show that after controlling the individual characteristics and family characteristics of the household heads, the conscientiousness and openness of the household heads have a significant positive impact on the social donation behavior of the family. On this basis, this paper takes the openness personality as an example, selects the identification strategy of processing effect, and tests the robustness of the causal effect of personality on household donation behavior. The openness personality has a significant positive impact on household external donation behavior. In the further study, it is found that with the improvement of the level of household charitable donation, the positive effect of the household head ’s openness personality on household charitable donation behavior is gradually weakening; The influence of openness personality on household charitable donation has the nonlinear characteristics of "marginal effect" increasing and obvious life cycle characteristics.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
The study uses 2018 China Family Panel Studies data to examine relationships between household heads’ Big Five personality measures and household giving. Its usable sample contains 10,479 observations after missing-value exclusions. Openness and conscientiousness are associated with some giving outcomes after adjustment for measured household and individual characteristics. For a family philanthropy office, the useful question is whether its process accommodates different ways of engaging with charitable decisions. The paper does not justify diagnosing a family member, predicting generosity from a personality label, or allocating governance authority on that basis. No family-office intervention was evaluated.
Governance & succession · Original source
Katherine M. White; Louise C. Starfelt Sutton; Xiang Zhao
Given the predominance of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to represent the psychological determinants underlying people’s charitable decisions, the present study synthesised the model’s key relationships, using meta-analysis, and tested the predictive utility of the model for charitable giving encompassing donations of blood, organs, time, and money. Given its relevance to altruistic decisions, the impact of moral norm was assessed also. A systematic literature review identified 117 samples (from 104 studies) examining donation intentions and/or prospective behaviour using TPB measures. The sample-weighted average effects for all associations were moderate-to-strong with perceived behavioural control (PBC) most strongly associated with intention (r+ = 0.562), followed by moral norm (r+ = 0.537), attitude (r+ = 0.507), and subjective norm (r+ = 0.472). Intention (r+ = 0.424) showed stronger associations with prospective behaviour than PBC (r+ = 0.301). The standard TPB predictors explained 44% of variance in intention (52% including moral norm). Intention and PBC explained 19% of variance in behaviour. A number of TPB associations showed differences when analysed for moderator variables such as length of follow-up for prospective behaviour and type of target behaviour. Stronger associations were found for the (subjective and moral) norm-intention associations among some of the different types of giving behaviours, especially for donating organs and time. Overall, the large proportion of variance explained by the TPB predictors especially for intention highlights those cognitions associated with people’s plans to give, informative for charities reliant on people’s propensity to give.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
This systematic review and meta-analysis examines the theory of planned behaviour across charitable giving, including blood, organs, time and money. It combines 117 samples from 104 studies. The reported model explains more variance in intention than in subsequent behavior: the standard predictors explain 44 percent of intention variance, increasing to 52 percent with moral norm, while intention and perceived behavioral control explain 19 percent of behavior variance. For a family foundation, the central lesson is not a formula for predicting gifts. It is that a stated plan to give and an executed commitment are different outcomes requiring separate records.
Governance & succession · Original source
Hongpeng Wang
While corporate charitable giving(CG) can help firms obtain external innovation resource support, it can also crowd out internal innovation resources. The purpose of this study is to clarify the mechanism of CG and government green subsidies(GS) on green innovation(GI). In this regard, we integrated signaling theory and principal-agent theory to provide a new theoretical perspective for simultaneously focus on the impact of external resource acquisition and internal resource allocation on GI. We conducted a threshold regression analysis on the balanced panel data of 863 listed companies of China from 2016 to 2019 to clarify the input boundary between the promoting and inhibiting effects of corporate CG on corporate GI. And we further explored the relationship between GS and GI under the effect of different CG thresholds. Our findings indicate that there is an inverted U-shaped threshold effect of CG on GI. The impact of GS on GI shows a decreasing marginal benefit as the intensity of CG increases. Based on the findings, we propose corresponding countermeasures for the management of enterprises and the government.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
The article examines charitable giving, government green subsidies and green innovation in a balanced panel of 863 Chinese listed manufacturing companies from 2016 to 2019, totaling 3,452 observations. It reports an inverted-U threshold pattern between charitable giving and green innovation and declining marginal associations of green subsidies with innovation as giving intensity increases. This evidence is adjacent to a family office that owns operating businesses. It is not a direct study of family foundations, unlisted firms or the financial returns of philanthropic portfolios, and its estimated thresholds are not universal donation limits.
Governance & succession · Original source
Stephan Müller; Holger A. Rau
This paper analyzes seasonal effects and their potential drivers in charitable giving. We conduct two studies to analyze whether donations to the German Red Cross differ between the Christmas season and summer. In study 1 we find that in the pre-Christmas shopping season prosocial subjects almost donate 50% less compared to prosocials in summer. In study 2 we replicate the low donations in the Christmas season. In an extensive questionnaire we control for several causes of this effect. The data suggest that the higher prosocials’ self-reported stress level, the lower the donations. The higher their relative savings, the lower the giving. Our questionnaire rules out that “donation fatigue” matters. That is, donations do not depend on the number of charitable campaigns subjects are confronted with and their engagement in these activities during Christmas season outside the lab.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
The paper compares giving to the German Red Cross during the Christmas season and summer in two studies. It reports lower laboratory giving in the Christmas period and explores self-reported stress and relative savings as possible explanations. The result challenges the assumption that a familiar giving season automatically increases an individual’s willingness to donate. It does not establish that a family foundation should abandon year-end fundraising, that every donor is less generous in December, or that a seasonal change will improve the office’s net receipts. The study setting and the real fundraising environment differ materially.
Governance & succession · Original source
Axel Sonntag; Daniel John Zizzo
We present the results of an experiment that (a) shows the usefulness of screening out drop-outs and (b) tests whether different methods of payment and reminder intervals affect charitable giving. Following a lab session, participants could make online donations to charity for a total duration of three months. Our procedure justifying the exclusion of drop-outs consists in requiring participants to collect payments in person flexibly and as known in advance and as highlighted to them later. Our interpretation is that participants who failed to collect their positive payments under these circumstances are likely not to satisfy dominance. If we restrict the sample to subjects who did not drop out, but not otherwise, reminders significantly increase the overall amount of charitable giving. We also find that weekly reminders are no more effective than monthly reminders in increasing charitable giving, and that, in our three months duration experiment, standing orders do not increase giving relative to one-off donations.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
This experiment followed participants for three months after a laboratory session, allowing donations to Oxfam through an online environment. Participants earned an endowment and received it through monthly experimental account payments. The paper compares reminder frequencies and payment methods. Its key qualification is that reminders increased giving in the restricted sample excluding identified drop-outs, but not in the full sample. Weekly reminders were not significantly more effective than monthly reminders, and standing orders did not improve giving over one-off donations during the experiment. Those distinctions must travel with any practical recommendation.
Governance & succession · Original source
Hongpeng Wang; Yang Zhang; Ming Tian; Zhenhua Wang; Yuan Ding
Corporate charitable donations under different motivations will have different effects on innovation investment through different action paths, which provides a new perspective to solve the inconsistency of existing research results. Based on the resource-dependent and principal-agent theories, this paper compares and discusses the relationship between charitable donations and innovation investment under different motivations. Using 2008 ~2019 relevant data of listed companies as research samples, a mixed regression model is established for the hypothesis test, and further examines the state-ownership of its moderating role. The results show that the altruistic motivation-oriented corporate donations have a significant inverted u-shaped effect on innovation investment. The tool motivation-oriented corporate donations have a significant U-shaped effect on innovation investment. Moreover, it is further found that for ST (Special Treatment) corporates with the risk of delisting in the tool motivation-oriented charitable donations type, the corporate charitable donations have a significant negative effect on innovation investment. State-ownership can enhance the inverted U-shaped relationship between altruistic motivation-oriented corporate donations and innovation investment but weaken the U-shaped relationship between tool motivation-oriented corporate donations and innovation investment.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
The study examines Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2019 and divides donations into motivation-oriented categories using observable characteristics. Its operational classification combines violations with publicity: low-publicity firms without violations represent an altruistic-oriented category, while high-publicity firms with violations represent a tool-oriented category. The analysis reports different nonlinear relationships with innovation investment across those groups. A family office should understand the classification before adopting its language. The variables are proxies; they do not reveal the private motives of a board, founder or executive with certainty.
Governance & succession · Original source
Yiling Zhang; Lang Wei
In this study, we examine how the prosocial ethical culture in audit firms, measured as their philanthropic contributions over gross revenues, influences auditor independence. Using 5,246 audits in the Chinese market between 2010 and 2012, we find that the level of ethical culture in audit firms is significantly negatively associated with the magnitude of earnings management and the frequencies of financial restatements of their client firms. We also find this association is even stronger when auditors provide services to clients that are economically important or when signing auditors bear school ties with at least one top executive of the client. Further evidence show that the ethical culture can both act as a mechanism that attract auditors with a compatible internal norm, and great a group norm in audit firms that directly shape auditor behavior. Collectively, our study suggests that ethical culture of audit firms can significantly improve auditor independence.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis. The study uses 5,246 audits in China during 2010–2012 to examine the association between audit-firm philanthropic contributions relative to revenues and two indicators of client reporting quality: earnings management and financial restatements. It reports negative associations between its ethical-culture proxy and these adverse outcomes, including stronger patterns where clients are economically important or connected through school ties. For a family office, the practical question is whether its assurance provider can resist pressure from a valuable or socially connected client. The research does not establish that donating causes independence, or that a generous firm is the best auditor for a particular family enterprise.
Governance & succession · Original source
Dongli Cao; Chunxian Nie
The underlying motivation behind corporate philanthropy (CP) is subject to multiple interpretations. For emerging markets, traditional interpretations based on a perspective of interest exchange often fall short. The institutional environment in China is characterized by uncertainty, particularly in the field of environmental protection, where the government’s attention, a scarce institutional resource, can influence the behaviors of heavily polluting companies. The government’s environmental attention (GEA) may be subject to campaign-style investment, which provides an opportunity for research. This study attempts to use institutional theory to construct a difference-in-differences model using the Central Inspection of Environmental Protection as an exogenous shock. It examines the causal impact of GEA on CP, observing that GEA has a positive effect on CP, especially for large companies, companies in less competitive industries, companies located in high-pollution areas, and companies with high environmental expenditure. The results indicate that campaign-style institutional changes provide a non-transactional political motivation for CP. In addition, we discuss the mechanism, which is the expectation change. Campaign-style institutional changes work by altering corporations’ expectations of the future institutional environment. We verify this mechanism from two perspectives, namely, the intensity of changes caused by uncertainty and corporate sensitivity to changes. Our results remain robust when subject to several tests based on different identification hypotheses and alternative measures. Unlike the existing literature on the political connections driving CP in China, this study, based on the institutional theory framework, reveals that campaign-style institutional changes constitute a non-transactional, unidirectional political motivation, which is a significant driving factor for CP in a Chinese context. This study evaluates the importance of GEA and reveals the non-transactional political motivations from the institutional theory perspective. This not only enriches existing discussions on the political motivations of CP but also broadens our understanding of the relationship between institutional uncertainty and CP in emerging markets.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis. This study examines Chinese listed companies and uses the Central Inspection of Environmental Protection as a policy shock to investigate changes in corporate philanthropy. Its dataset contains 40,406 observations from 2,126 companies over 2003–2021. The authors compare heavily polluting and other industries before and after the inspection program and report increased giving associated with government environmental attention. The proposed family-office application concerns governance of portfolio-company donations during regulatory pressure. The paper does not show that donations reduce pollution, repair environmental harm or satisfy a company’s compliance obligations.
Governance & succession · Original source
Ruofan Bai
The topic of financial wellbeing is a current concern within the realm of personal and household finance. This study aims to examine the influence of cognitive factors, specifically financial literacy, mental budgeting, and self-control, on subjective financial wellbeing. While there exist multiple determinants of financial wellbeing, this research focuses on these particular cognitive factors. The present study aims to examine the mediating role of investment decision-making behavior in the association between cognitive factors and financial well-being. The study employed Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data collected from a sample of 449 Chinese university students, with the aim of assessing the empirical associations. The results indicate that financial literacy, mental budgeting, and self-control exert a favorable and noteworthy influence on an individual’s financial well-being. The results indicate that individuals with a greater degree of financial literacy are more prone to achieving superior financial well-being. Moreover, individuals who practice mental budgeting, a technique that entails mentally classifying and monitoring their expenditures, demonstrate elevated levels of financial well-being. Likewise, the exercise of self-regulation is identified as a pivotal element that impacts an individual’s financial wellbeing. The findings indicate that there is evidence to support the mediator, investment decision-making behavior. This mediator partially mediates the association between the independent variables, namely financial literacy, mental budgeting, and self-control, and financial well-being. The results suggest that individuals with elevated levels of financial literacy, proficient mental budgeting skills, and self-regulatory abilities are inclined towards demonstrating favorable investment decision-making conduct. Consequently, this contributes to their general financial welfare. In general, the study’s theoretical implications augment the current knowledge repository, while its practical implications provide feasible perspectives for policymakers, financial institutions, and individuals to foster financial wellness and enhance financial results.
Governance & succession · Solutions companion
Family Office Private Wealth Journal · Editorial research desk
AI-assisted editorial analysis. The study examines financial literacy, mental budgeting, self-control and subjective financial wellbeing using responses from 449 Chinese university students. The convenience sample includes both business and non-business majors, and the authors use partial least squares structural equation modeling to examine relationships among the constructs. They report positive associations and a mediating role for investment decision-making behavior. For a family office, the useful application is to the design of voluntary financial education and conversations about money. The sample is not a group of heirs, family-office employees or professional investors.