School of Business

CSR and Founder Legacy Dynamics Around Succession: An Intertemporal Choice Perspective

Document Type

Article

Abstract

There is much debate as to whether family firms are socially responsible; We believe the question can be informed by changes that occur in managerial priorities across the length of founders’ careers. Drawing on behavioral theories of intertemporal choice, we argue that temporal discounting causes CSR to vary systematically across three succession stages: successor identification, power sharing, and founder exit. CSR related to founder legacy increases when founders identify successors because its socioemotional benefits then become more near-term and salient; subsequently, however, it declines as successors gain influence during power sharing with the founder, and further after founder exit because for successors any CSR legacy benefits are temporally remote and thus more discounted. Evidence from 2,072 listed Chinese family firms supports this multistage transformation, especially among older and first-born founders, and among younger heirs, heirs with shorter tenures, and heirs without children. By viewing legacy concerns through an intertemporal choice lens, we show them to be time-contingent—shaping CSR differently across succession stages and thereby helping reconcile prior findings. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2026.

Publication Title

Journal of Business Ethics

Publication Date

2026

ISSN

0167-4544

DOI

10.1007/s10551-026-06318-4

Keywords

CSR, family firms, intertemporal choice, legacy

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