Earnings management in firms has several different motivations. This article examines the preserving of socioemotional wealth as a motive for earnings management in specific types of private family firms by looking at the generational stage, the management team, and the CEO position. The authors’ results suggest that socioemotional wealth may play a role as motive for upward earnings management when firm performance is poor. Under this condition, first-generation and founder-led private family firms seem to have greater incentive to engage in upward earnings management because of the preservation of their socioemotional wealth.

This article aims to increase our understanding of family firms’ entrepreneurial risk-taking behavior by looking at the differences between family and nonfamily firms and by studying variations among family firms. We find empirical support for a positive influence of a nonfamily CEO on the family firm’s level of entrepreneurial risk taking during the initial years of his or her CEO tenure and a leveling out of entrepreneurial risk taking as the CEO tenure of the nonfamily CEO is extended. We build on the concept of psychological ownership to explain these new findings.