Is blood always thicker than water? Family firm parents, kinship ties, and the survival of spawns

<p>We theorize that due to their ability to draw upon the distinctive bonding and bridging social capital resources of their family firm parents, family member spawns have longer early survival times than nonfamily member spawns from family firms, which in turn should have longer early survival times than spawns from nonfamily firm parents. We also predict that the survival enhancing effects of family parent bonding and bridging social capital are conditional on the spatial, cognitive and social proximity between the parent and the spawn. Using a population wide sample of 114,837 spawns founded in Sweden between 2000 and 2007, we find that nonfamily member spawns survive longer than spawns from nonfamily firms, and that this survival enhancing effect is contingent on the spatial and social proximity between the spawn and its parent. We also find that spawns founded by family members, on average, do not survive longer than spawns from family firms founded by nonfamily members, and that greater spatial and cognitive distance even hurt the survival of family member spawns. We discuss the contributions of our research to the spawning, family firm, and entrepreneurship literatures.</p>

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