“Peeling the onion” of family involvement: Understanding how Socio-Emotional Wealth within- and across- team relations impacts financial performance

This article investigates the impact of family involvement in business through a multi-level approach. We ground on recent insights from the Socio-Emotional Wealth perspective (SEW) to argue that family involvement at different corporate governance levels impacts within and across team relations, ultimately affecting how firms perform financially. Based on a unique collection of data on Italian family-controlled companies, results show a U-shaped relationship between the presence of family CEOs in teams of co-leaders and financial performance, being negatively moderated by the presence of family members inside corporate boards. However, this relation ceases to exist when family ownership is highly concentrated.