The courage to choose! Primogeniture and leadership succession in family firms

Building on a unique dataset with information on the nuclear structure of entrepreneurial families, we integrate leadership succession into a socioemotional wealth (SEW) logic to test the antecedents and consequences of primogeniture vis-à-vis second- or subsequent born selection in family firm succession. Our findings suggest that appointing a family firstborn sibling is more likely when there is a high degree of SEW endowment and the family firm has pre-succession performance below aspiration levels. Next, we find that appointing a second- or subsequent-born sibling has a positive and significant effect on post-succession firm profitability, particularly when the firm is in its second generation or later.