IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/luc/wpaper/25-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Patents, trade secrets and performance aspirations in family firms

Author

Listed:
  • Katrin Hussinger

    (DEM, Université du Luxembourg)

  • Issah Wunnam

    (University of Leicester, UK)

Abstract

We investigate whether family ownership is associated with a preference for patents or trade secrets. Using a sample of S&P 500 firms, we show that family ownership is negatively associated with patenting and positively associated with the usage of trade secrets. We further show that both relationships are moderated by firm performance below the aspiration level, i.e. the performance benchmark level that an organization sets. These results can be explained with a mixed gambles behavioral agency framework. When family firms perform below their aspiration level, prospective financial gains become relatively more important as compared to current socio emotional wealth so that patents become more and trade secrets less attractive.

Suggested Citation

  • Katrin Hussinger & Issah Wunnam, 2025. "Patents, trade secrets and performance aspirations in family firms," DEM Discussion Paper Series 25-11, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:luc:wpaper:25-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/10993/65017
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Family firms; patents; trade secrets; mixed gambles; aspiration gap.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    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:luc:wpaper:25-11. 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: Marina Legrand (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crcrplu.html .

    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.