Family involvement and corporate financialization: evidence from China

Purpose - Under the background of continuous sluggishness of the real economy and expansion of asset sectors, the Chinese economy exists a trend of “from the real to the virtual.” Managing the corporate financialization is the key to prevent the real economy “from real to virtual.” The paper explores the influence of family involvement on corporate financialization since family firms are an important proportion of real sectors. Design/methodology/approach - Based on Socioemotional Wealth Theory, this paper makes empirical study using the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2022 to explore the influence of family involvement on corporate financialization, mainly from the perspectives of family engagement, family identity of CEO and family control power. Findings - These are the findings: (1) Family engagement will inhibit corporate financialization; (2) Compared with employing external managers, family members acting as CEOs will decrease corporate financialization; (3) The proportion of family ownership is negatively correlated with the level of corporate financialization. Originality/value - The originality of this paper include these: (1) Analyzing the differences in the financialization of real enterprises with different characteristics and attributes; (2) Expanding the research on the internal motivation of the financialization of the real enterprises, and supplementing the research literature on family firms and corporate financialization; (3) Exploring the internal influence mechanism of financialization of family firms under the background of Chinese culture.