IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bracre/v57y2025i4s0890838924000246.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Institutional investor ESG activism and exploratory green innovation: Unpacking the heterogeneous responses of family firms across intergenerational contexts

Author

Listed:
  • Wu, Bao
  • Chen, Feng
  • Li, Lanhua
  • Xu, Lei
  • Liu, Zijia
  • Wu, Yaoyao

Abstract

This paper investigates the heterogeneous responses to institutional investor ESG activism by expanding reference point theory among non-family firms and family firms with different intergenerational contexts. Using a Chinese family firm database comprising 14,425 observations from 2012 to 2020, this study finds that institutional investor ESG activism is more likely to stimulate exploratory green innovation in family firms than in non-family firms. Such linkage between institutional investor ESG activism and exploratory green innovation is stronger in second-generation family firms than in first-generation firms. Furthermore, this study explores the moderating roles of family involvement and financial slack in first- and second-generation family firms as they respond to institutional investor ESG activism. Specifically, both family involvement and financial slack can enhance the positive impact of institutional investor ESG activism on exploratory green innovation in the context of second-generation family firms. The moderating effect of family involvement is not significant, whereas the moderating effect of financial slack turns into be negative in the context of first-generation family firms. Our study highlights the heterogeneous responses to institutional investor ESG activism of family firms with different intergenerational contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Wu, Bao & Chen, Feng & Li, Lanhua & Xu, Lei & Liu, Zijia & Wu, Yaoyao, 2025. "Institutional investor ESG activism and exploratory green innovation: Unpacking the heterogeneous responses of family firms across intergenerational contexts," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(4).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:57:y:2025:i:4:s0890838924000246
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2024.101324
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838924000246
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bar.2024.101324?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:bracre:v:57:y:2025:i:4:s0890838924000246. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-british-accounting-review .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.