Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business
Vol. 17, No. 3 (September-December 2015): 259-277

Socioemotional Wealth and Firms’ Control:
Evidence from Malaysian Chinese Owned Companies
Chin Fei Goh,*a Amran Rasli,a Owee Kowang Tan,a and Sang Long Choib
a
b

Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Abstract: This paper explores how the preservation of socioemotional wealth can be manifested in the
control and corporate governance of Malaysian Chinese firms. Using panel data from the Industrial
Products index of the Bursa Malaysia (the Malaysian stock exchange) during 2003-2006, we show that the
ingrained ‘life-raft values’ among overseas Chinese entrepreneurs can be associated with the preservation
of their socioemotional wealth, and thus they prioritize control over their firms. Additionally, we confirm
the monitoring role of non-dominant large shareholders in reducing the families’ influence in managing
and enhancing their firms’ performance. Specifically, control contestability exercised by the non-dominant large shareholders mediates the relationship between a family’s involvement in management and their
firm’s performance.
Abstrak: Makalah ini membahas bagaimana pelestarian kekayaan sosioemosional dapat diwujudkan dalam
kontrol dan tata kelola perusahaan dari perusahaan China Malaysia. Menggunakan data panel dari indeks
Industri Produk dari Bursa Malaysia selama 2003-2006, menunjukkan bahwa mendarah-daging 'hidupnilai rakit' antara pengusaha Cina di luar negeri dapat dikaitkan dengan pelestarian kekayaan sosioemosional
mereka, sehingga mereka memprioritaskan kontrol atas perusahaan mereka. Selain itu, kami mengkonfirmasi
peran monitoring pemegang saham besar non-dominan dalam mengurangi kinerja keluarga 'pengaruh
dalam mengelola dan meningkatkan perusahaan mereka.' Secara khusus, kontrol contestability dilakukan
oleh pemegang saham besar non-dominan yang memediasi hubungan antara keterlibatan keluarga dalam
manajemen dan kinerja perusahaan mereka.

Keywords: corporate g overnance; famil y fi rms; large shareholders; life-raft values;
socioemotional wealth

JEL classification: G30, G32

* Corresponding author’s e-mail: gcfei@utm.my
ISSN: 1141-1128
http://journal.ugm.ac.id/gamaijb

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Goh et al.

Introduction
A contention of the socioemotional
wealth concept is that family firms rely on a
pivotal reference point, namely socioemotional wealth, in decision-making (GómezMejía et al. 2007; Gomez-Mejia et al. 2011).
In this regard, family owners view their business enterprises as a means to achieve family
affective needs in which the preservation of
the family’s welfare and emotional satisfaction becomes the main objective of the family businesses. That is, the non-economic dimension of socioemotional wealth pre-empts
profit maximization as the ultimate objective
of the family businesses.
The researchers in the areas of family
businesses generally acknowledge that family firms are distinctive business entities because they are not exclusively driven by economic objectives (Sirmon and Hitt 2003;
Gomez-Mejia et al. 2011; Berrone et al. 2012;
Siebels and zu Knyphausen-Aufseß 2012).
While the preservation of socioemotional
wealth may not become the pivotal point of
decision-making in family firms, familial orientations and agendas tend to be reflected in
the owner-managed firms (Miller et al. 2011).
In other words, owner-managed firms tend
to prioritize control of the firm to protect their
socioemotional wealth. By contrast, family
firms with a separation of ownership and
control tend to be more entrepreneurially oriented. In this regard, there is a knowledge gap
in understanding the reaction of family owners to avoiding losing control of their firms
due to the threat of non-dominant shareholders (Schulze and Gedajlovic 2010).
Most recent studies into overseas ethnic-Chinese businesses have mainly focused
on ‘familism’ in the business’ structure and
Chinese culture (Wijaya 2008; Carney and
Gedajlovic 2002; Bertrand and Schoar 2006).
260

Chinese-ethnic business enterprises generally
prioritize kinship ties in raising capital, hiring managers and adopt a family-centric management style. Yet, despite the extensive literature on overseas Chinese businesses, very
little research has directly examined the interaction between family owners and nondominant large shareholders, which in turn
may affect the firms’ performance. This
knowledge void is interesting because the
presence of multiple large shareholders in an
ownership structure can be a powerful coalition to m onitor and exercise control
contestability over family owners in family
firms (Attig et al. 2009; Gutierrez and Pombo
2009; Goh et al. 2014).
Thus, this study intends to fill the
knowledge void by examining the preservation of socioemotional wealth in family firms
with regard to the firms’ control in overseas
Chinese family firms. We examine how family owners react to the control contestability
exercised by non-dominant large shareholders. We propose that overseas Chinese family
firms with the ingrained ‘life-raft values’ of
Chinese family businesses can be explained
by the preservation of the socioemotional
wealth. To the best of our knowledge, this
study represents the first attempt to bridge
the gap between the socioemotional wealth
and ‘life-raft values’ in Chinese family businesses.
This paper focus on overseas Chinese
in Malaysia (henceforth Malaysian Chinese)
because we considered that the institutional
context is an important determinant in shaping the culture and management style for
overseas Chinese businesses. In general, the
Malaysian economic system is regarded as a
state-directed economy. Malaysian Chinese
entrepreneurs are discontent with the corporate ownership restrictions imposed by the
New Economic Policy (NEP) in Malaysia

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015

(Gomez 2009). In addition, the establishment
of state-owned enterprises under the NEP
has threatened the dominant ownership position of Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs in
the corporate sectors. Thus, this hostile business environment provides an excellent empirical setting to examine the preservation of
socioemotional welfare among Malaysian
Chinese entrepreneurs. Specifically, we chose
the Malaysian Chinese businesses in the
manufacturing sector for two reasons. Firstly,
we argue that capital intensive manufacturing firms may induce close monitoring or intervention by their non-dominant large shareholders to prevent the appropriation of the
firms’ assets by the family owners. Secondly,
the NEP has restricted the Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs in their attempts to increase their ownership in newly established
manufacturing firms (Gomez 2009).
The rest of the paper is organized as
follows. The next section reviews the relevant
literature and develops the hypotheses. Section 3 discusses the dataset and the solution
methods. The main results are presented in
Section 4. Section 5 provides a conclusion.

Literature Review and
Hypotheses Development
Preservation of Socioemotional
wealth in Family Firms
Family firms are widely recognized as
unique business entities because they are not
exclusively driven by economic objectives
(Dyer 2003; Gomez-Mejia et al. 2011). In the
view of the uniqueness of family firms,
Gómez-Mej ía et al . (2007) proposed a
Socioemotional Wealth (SEW) framework to
explain the myths of decision-making in family firms. The main assumption of SEW is

that a family firm relies on its perceived prime
reference point for any major decision-making. SEW explains that the family owners
emphasize the family’s welfare and emotional
attachments over economic utility in family
firms. Stated differently, preservation of the
SEW can be interpreted as the preservation
of the family’s utility function that includes
the family’s welfare and emotional attachments. Thus, the risk profile of the family
owners is contingent upon protecting their
socioemotional wealth.

Family Involvement
in Management and Firm
Performance
In general, family owners can influence
business strategies and decision-making because they are the dominant controlling shareholders in the firms. Nevertheless, family influences may differ across family firms due
to the different degrees of family involvement in management (Shanker and Astrachan
1996) and thus the family’s emotional components are also not uniformly identical.
Berrone et al. (2012) explain that family firms
with strong influences and the families’ involvement in management tend to prioritize
their socioemotional wealth. This can be seen
from the family’s involvement in management, through the appointment of the family
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in family
firms. This is also consistent with the view
that family involvement in management tends
to reflect familial orientations and agendas
in family firms (Miller et al. 2011).
Family involvement in management often leads to family owners having strong control over the firm through two sources of
power. Firstly, the appointment of family
CEOs gives ultimate control to the family
owners of the firms’ decision-making. Be-

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Goh et al.

cause the CEO is the highest formal position within the hierarchical organization, family CEOs are less likely to rely on support
from other members of the management team
in controlling the firm (Finkelstein 1992).
Additionally, the CEO (or management) is
better positioned to have knowledge and control of the firm’s informational material
(Mace 1972). Thus, family CEOs can exert a
significant influence over outside directors
who rely on the disclosed information to perform any independent monitoring. Another
example is that the family owners may opt
for a CEOs duality leadership structure,
through the appointment of family members
to be the CEO and the chairman of the board
of directors to fully control the firm and its
m anagem ent (Adams, Herm al in, and
Weisbach 2010).
Secondly, family owners can enhance their
control of the firm through their dominant
ownership position in the ownership structure. The ownership power defined here is
the power delegated to managers to manage
the business on behalf of the shareholders.
In family firms, the structural power of family managers is enhanced by their ownership
power and thus they have a strong influence
over the firms’ decision-making (Daily and
Johnson 1997). Furthermore, high ownership
power enables family CEOs to attenuate the
monitoring role of the board of directors by
reduci ng the board’s i ndependence
(Finkelstein 1992). In this regard, Jones et al.
(2008) explain that family firms are reluctant
to lose control of the firm in order to preserve the SEW; therefore, family firms generally have higher trust and relational ties with
affiliated directors and are unlikely to cede
control to the board.
As noted above, family owners derive
their strong control from their structural and
ownership powers. The power in the firm’s

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structure is, therefore, polarized when the
family owners become involved in management. However, excessive power could facilitate the expropriation of minority shareholders by family owners who prioritize the
SEW’s preservation, i.e., firm resources are
utilized to safeguard family interests rather
than maximize the firm’s value. This is also
known as Principal-Principal (PP) conflicts
(Jiang and Peng 2011). In this regard, firms’
assets and resources are subject to appropriation by the family owners. For example, their
dominant position enables the family owners
to determine profit sharing schemes and the
business’ structures to serve their personal
interests (Claessens and Fan 2002). This is
known as ‘tunnelling resources’ and can be
exhibited through transfer pricing, unfairly
high compensation packages for management, engaging in non-arms length transactions (La Porta et al. 2002) and paying out
high dividends (Chen et al. 2009). In turn,
the stock market may discount the market
value of family firms because of heightened
concerns when the controlling shareholders
are exposed to more incentives to expropriate minority shareholders (Young et al. 2008).
In line with the previous arguments,
prior empirical studies have shown that the
expropriation of minority shareholders is
prevalent in emerging economies (Wahab et
al. 2011; Chen et al. 2009; Liew 2007). For
instance, Chen et al. (2009) show that controlling shareholders utilize money raised
during the initial public offering and rights
issue to pay dividends based on self interest
objectives in China. Similar evidence is also
found in Malaysia. Wahab et al. (2011) discovered that announcements of related party
transactions by firms had discounted these
firms’ market performance in Malaysia. Similarly, Liew (2007) discovered that corporate
practitioners perceived that the expropriation

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015

of the minority shareholders by the controlling shareholders was prevalent in Malaysia.
The weak enforcement of the rules and regulations in Malaysia also increases the risk of
the expropriations of minority shareholders
by the controlling shareholders (Porta et al.
1998; Friedman et al. 2003). The corresponding testable hypothesis is thus:

Large control contestability stemming
from the non-dominant large shareholders in
the ownership structure signifies a threat to
the family owners of losing control of the
firm. Although the corporate takeover mechanism is generally restricted by high ownership
concentrations in emerging economies (Porta
et al. 1999), we suggest that corporate takeovers may be feasible if the non-family large
shareholders have a higher proportion of the
shares. The rationale is that the non-family
large shareholders do not need to purchase
shares aggressively in a limited supply market (Burkart et al. 1998). Stated differently, a
group of large shareholders can form a coalition to initiate a takeover of a firm at a lower
cost. For example, in Malaysia, the Business
Times (2013) reported that a coalition of four
large shareholders of Bright Packing Berhad
managed to remove the dominant family
shareholders, who owned about 30.58 percent of the voting rights, from the board of
directors.

vestors can hold 30 percent, 40 percent and
30 percent corporate ownership respectively
(Yasuda 1991). The Bumiputera in the NEP
policy mainly refers to the ethnic-Malay group
in Malaysia (Tam and Tan 2007). To do so,
the Malaysian government enacted the Industrial Coordination Act of 1975 (ICA 1975)
to increase the Bumiputera ownership in the
corporate sector by restricti ng nonBumiputera and foreign equity ownership in
new manufacturing establishments (Yeung
1999). Needless to say, Malaysia Chinese
entrepreneurs are fearful of losing corporate
ownership (or control) because the NEP
policy is hostile towards non-Bumiputera ethnic groups. Thus, Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs must resort to family members in
their business operations according to their
ingrai ned ‘life-raft values’ (Carney and
Gedajlovic 2002). In turn, control over their
firms becomes a means for Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs to achieve security in a
hostile environment (Kao 1993). These arguments centre on the overseas Chinese entrepreneurs view of the business enterprise
as a ‘familial life raft’ and they have a strong
preference to sustain the status quo of the
family firms through maintaining control over
the firms. Stated differently, the preservation
of their control of the firms becomes the pivotal point in Malaysian Chinese family businesses and thus they are reluctant to liquidate their equity shares. In turn, the voting
rights of the non-dominant large shareholders are restricted since it is expensive to acquire more of the limited freely floating shares
on the open market.

In Malaysia, Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs have been discriminated against
since the implementation of the NEP in
1971. The NEP is an affirmative action policy
to restructure corporate ownership so that
Bumiputera, non-Bumiputera and foreign in-

Putting these ideas together, we believe
that control rights are the single most important instrument for family owners to shield
them from the threats from other large shareholders. In other words, control over the firm
is the pivotal point for Malaysian Chinese

H1: Family involvement in management is negatively
related to the firms’ performance.

Preservation of Socioemotional
Wealth and Control Contestability

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Goh et al.

owner- managed fi rm s to protect their
socioemotional wealth. Similar arguments can
be detected in recent empirical studies that
show that family owners incorporate emotional values into their control over their firms
(Zellweger et al. 2012; Gómez-Mejía et al.
2007). For instance, Gómez-Mejía et al.
(2007) investigated family choices about control in 1237 Spanish family firms with olive
oil mills for a 53-year sample period. They
showed that the higher degree of family involvement in the ownership and control signified greater SEW attachments among the
family owners. Thus, the Spanish family owners viewed the preservation of their SEW to
be a prime reference point in their business
operations and they were willing to accept
lower levels of performance from their firms,
and a higher probability of their businesses
failing, to preserve their control over their
firms. In a similar vein, Zellweger et al. (2012)
provided corroborating evidence by showing
that the family owners perceived their equity
shares to have a higher fair value compared
to the market’s perceived fair value in Switzerland and Germany. Zellweger et al. (2012)
concluded that family owners, who intended
to have transgenerational control, asked for
significant premiums on their equity shares.
Based on the above arguments, we propose
the following hypothesis:
H2: Family involvement in management is negatively
related to the control contestability in the ownership structure stemming from non-dominant
large shareholders.
Thus far, we have argued that the preservation of socioemotional wealth translates
into lower control contestability in the ownership structure. Nevertheless, the control
contestability exercised by non-dominant
large shareholders can enhance corporate
governance in family firms. An implication

264

of this line of reasoning is that family orientation in family-controlled firms may be suppressed by the monitoring of non-dominant
large shareholders. The intervention of nondominant large shareholders in the family’s
agenda can be manifested in two ways.
First, the presence of large shareholders may actively engage in firms’ monitoring
with lower costs (Shleifer and Vishny 1986).
Previous empirical studies have shown institutional investors can influence the corporate
investment decisions in technology-based
firms (Le et al. 2006; Kor 2006). For example,
Le et al. (2006) showed that institutional
ownership positively moderated the relationship between a firm’s R&D investment and
the firm’s performance. This implies all types
of firms are likely to experience stringent
monitoring and intervention because institutional investors are equipped with oversight
skills (Le et al. 2006).
Second, large shareholders may intervene
in designing the compensation packages for
family managers. Gomez-Mejia et al. (2003)
showed that compensation packages for family firms differed to those of non-family firms
in the United States. Specifically, family owners are reluctant to issue stock options to nonfamily executives to avoid diluting control of
the firm. The compensation package for family CEOs is also designed to be insulated from
systematic business risks. This can be interpreted as family owners intending to protect
family managers in family-controlled firms.
Meanwhile, Gomez-Mejia et al. (2003) also
showed that the presence of institutional investors discouraged the issuance of stocks
for family CEOs to prevent family owners
strengthening their controlling position. Thus,
familial orientations in compensation packages were restricted by the monitoring of large
shareholders.

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015

Based on these explanations, our view
is that control contestability in the ownership
structure enhances corporate governance and
thus enhances the performance of family
firms. Thus, the control contestability will
subsequently mediate the relationship between family involvement in management
and the firms’ performance. We submit the
following hypothesis.
H3: The control contestability in the ownership structure stemming from non-dominant large shareholders mediates the relationship between the
family’s involvement in management and the
firm’s performance.

Methods
Sample and Data Collection
Our dataset covers 112 Malaysian Chinese firms listed in the Industrial Products
index on the Bursa Malaysia (the Malaysian
stock exchange). The selected firms are classified as manufacturing firms in the industrial products industry, based on the industry’s
definition by Bursa Malaysia. We obtained
ownership information, corporate governance; and family relations for substantial
shareholders and directors from the annual
reports. Financial data and market equity
prices were collected from Datastream.
To identify Malaysian Chinese family
firms, we relied on a 10 percent cut-off of
voting rights (Claessens et al. 2002) as the
threshold to identify the ultimate controlling
shareholders. We regarded ownership by all
the family members as a single controlling
entity (Claessens et al. 2002). Because multiple controlling shareholders may be present
in the ownership structure, we only selected
Malaysian Chinese family firms where the
Chinese family owners appeared to be the
largest shareholders.

We purposely chose the sample period
from 2003 to 2006 because it was a stable
economic period, to reduce potential bias in
the market-based performance measures (He
and Wang 2009). The rationale is that market investors may be irrational when economic shocks unfold, such as during a financial crisis, and subsequently depress the market equity prices and cause unstable performance by firms (Saffi and Sigurdsson 2011).
In total, our sample comprises of 448 firmyear observations over the four years.
Finally, our chosen sample period offered
a setting where governance variables could
be assumed to be exogenous with respect to
firms’ performance. Such a sample period is
important because the rapidly changing ownership patterns may lead to reverse causality
(Claessens et al. 2002; Gassen 2014). The
ownership structure in Malaysia has largely
remained unchanged between 2000 and 2008
(Carney and Child 2013; Claessens et al.
2002), so we can rule out the reverse causality of governance variables from 2003 to
2006 in this study.

Measurements
A Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to perform the statistical tests for the proposed
hypotheses in this study. The structural equation modelling was appropriate because some
corporate governance and financial variables
were difficult to observe directly (Azim 2012;
Lin 2005; Johnson and Greening 1999). For
example, we used a two-item construct to
measure control contestability, family involvement in management, capital structure,
firms’ investment and firms’ size in this study
and thus mitigating the measurement errors
problems. We used SmartPLS 2.0 in the
model’s estimation and results evaluation
(Ringle et al. 2005). We followed the two step
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Goh et al.

approach for reporting the PLS-SEM results
to assess the measurement model and the
structural model (Chin 2010).
In this study, a single-item measure is
used for several constructs including firms’
performance, ownership concentration and
board independence. This single-item construct had been utilized in prior corporate governance studies that employed the PLS-SEM
method when there were no latent variables
available (Berthelot et al. 2012; Li et al. 2006).
Diamantopoulos et al. (2012) suggest that the
single-item construct (or concrete construct)
should be used when there is only one, if not
holistically one, attribute being represented.
In this regard, the attribute of the variables
such as firms’ performance, ownership concentration and board independence is concrete and can be measured by the single-item
construct.
First, the firm’s performance construct
was the market-to-book ratio. The firm’s market value was the market value of the common stock and the book value of preferred
shares and debt, whereas the book value was
the total assets. Claessens et al. (2002) and
Young et al. (2008) suggested that the market-based valuation was appropriate to measure the firm’s performance in emerging economies because market investors would discount
the fair value of the shareholdings based on
the concerns of principal-to-principal conflicts.
Second, ownership concentration was the
voting rights of the largest shareholder in the
selected Malaysian Chinese firms (Liew et al.
2011; Grosfeld 2009; Tam and Tan 2007).
That was, the ownership concentration was
also the voting rights owned by the Malaysian Chinese family owners in their family
firms. We included ownership concentration
because it was regarded as an incentive for
shareholders to engage in monitoring the firm
and its management.
266

Third, board independence was the proportion of independent directors on the
board. The independent directors were included because they were expected to independently monitor the firm’s management
(Adams et al. 2010).
Several multiple item constructs were
regarded as latent variables in this study. First,
control contestability was measured by two
items that reflected the construct: (i) the ratio
of the voting rights of the second largest shareholder to the voting rights of the largest shareholder, and (ii) the ratio of the pooled voting
rights of the second to fifth largest shareholders to the voting rights of the largest shareholder (Attig et al. 2009; Luo et al. 2013).
Second, family involvement in management construct was measured by two items
reflecting the construct: (i) the family CEO
and (ii) the CEO-chairman’s duality. This construct was used to reflect the preservation of
the socioemotional wealth in family firms
where the family had direct involvement in the
firm’s management (Berrone et al. 2012;
Gomez-Mejia et al. 2011). Kowalewski et al.
(2010) and Peng and Jiang (2010) suggest that
family CEOs can be used to measure the degree of family involvement in management.
The CEO-chairman’s duality is also included
because family firms may attempt to safeguard
their family’s interests by appointing family
members as the CEO and Chairman of the
board of directors (Tam and Tan 2007).
Third, capital structure, firms’ investment, firms’ size are included as controlling
constructs. Capital structure was measured by
two items: (i) the ratio of the total debt to the
total assets and (ii) the ratio of the total debt
to the total common shares (Luo et al. 2013;
Chen et al. 2011). Likewise, the firms’ investment construct was measured by two items:
(i) the capital expenditure divided by the total assets and (ii) the capital expenditure di-

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vided by the total sales (King and Wen 2011;
Cheng 2008). The firms’ size (the book value
of the firms’ assets and the firms’ sales) was
included to control the economic advantages
derived from the firms’ resources (Demsetz
and Lehn 1985).
Finally, year variables were included to
control the time effects (Gutierrez and Pombo
2009). Because our sample period covers four
years, three dummy variables (2004, 2005 and
2006) were included whereas 2003 was excluded.

Empirical Results and
Discussions
Measurement Models
Table 1 demonstrates the descriptive
analysis for the observed variables in this study.
The observed variables are the items that were
measured by the constructs in the PLS-SEM.
According to Hair et al. (2011), reflective
measurement models in the PLS-SEM are
assessed through indicator reliability, inter-

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics
Constructs/indicators

Mean

Minimum

Maximum

0.71

0.10

7.29

37.67

11.58

71.98

Family CEO

0.73

0.00

1.00

CEO Duality

0.37

0.00

1.00

The ratio of the voting rights of the second
largest shareholder to the voting rights of
the largest shareholder
The ratio of the pooled voting rights of the
second to fifth largest shareholders to the
voting rights of the largest shareholder
Board independence

0.31

0.01

1.00

0.68

0.02

2.49

Proportion of independent directors on the
boards
Capital structure

0.40

0.00

0.83

Ratio of total debt to total assets

0.26

0.00

1.48

Ratio of total debt to total common shares

0.65

0.00

14.86

Capital expenditure divided by total assets

0.05

0.00

0.41

Capital expenditure divided by total sales

0.08

0.00

1.09

Firm assets (in RM million)

286.57

12.74

3965.16

Sales (in RM million)

336.54

24.40

3275.21

Firm performance
Market-to-book ratio
Ownership concentration
Voting rights of the largest shareholder
Family involvement in management

Control contestability

Firm investment

Firm size

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Goh et al.

nal consistency reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. Based on our
analysis, all the indicator loadings in the reflective constructs achieved 0.743 and higher,
which exceeds the minimum threshold value
of 0.70 stipulated for the indicators’ reliability (Hair et al. 2011) (see Table 2). Similarly,
we noticed all the composite reliability results
are higher than the minimum threshold value
of 0.7, which demonstrates all the construct
measures achieved the required internal consistency reliability (Hair et al. 2011). The
Average Variable Extracted (AVE) for all the

constructs was 0.690 and higher, which exceeds the threshold value of 0.5, providing
evidence of convergent validity (Hair et al.
2011). Finally, we used Fornell-Larcker’s criterion to assess the discriminant validity of
the constructs. Our results show all the constructs have achieved discriminant validity
because the square root of the AVEs was
higher than all the inter-construct correlations
(see Table 3) (Hair et al. 2011). In summary,
our assessment shows that the measurement
models in this study were reliable and valid.

Table 2. Measurement Model Evaluation Results
Constructs/Indicators

Notation

Loading

Composite
Reliability

AVE

MB

1

1

1

Conc

1

1

1

FIM

0.782

0.816

0.690

0.981

0.963

1

1

1

0.977

0.857

0.753

Firm performance
Market-to-book ratio

Ownership concentration
Voting rights of the largest shareholder

Family involvement in management
Family CEO
CEO Duality

0.877

Control contestability
The ratio of the voting rights of the second largest
shareholder to the voting rights of the largest
shareholder
The ratio of the pooled voting rights of the second to
fifth largest shareholders to the voting rights of the
largest shareholder

Board independence

Contest

0.977

0.985
Bind

Proportion of independent directors on the boards

Capital structure
Ratio of total debt to total assets
Ratio of total debt to total common shares

Lev

0.743

Firm investment
Capital expenditure divided by total assets

CAPEX

0.946
0.957

0.950

0.905

Size

0.997

0.934

0.878

2004

0.872
1

1

1

2005

1

1

1

2006

1

1

1

Capital expenditure divided by total sales

Firm size
Firm assets
Sales

Year 2004
Year 2005
Year 2006

268

Note: The non-diagonal elements are the latent correlations while the diagonal elements (in bold) are the square root of the AVEs

Table 3. Discriminant Validity Assessment

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Structural Model
In estimating the significance level of
the path coefficient, we used a bootstrapping
procedure (448 cases and 5000 samples), a
no-sign changes option and a path weighting
scheme. The assessment of goodness-of-fit
was not required in the structural model of
the PLS-SEM (Chin 2010). Nevertheless, the
model validity of the PLS-SEM was examined through a predictive relevance (Qsquared), to indicate the degree of predictive
relevance at the indicator level, i.e., how well
the model can sufficiently predict the indicators of the endogenous constructs (Hair,
Ringle, and Sarstedt 2011). As a general rule
of thumb, the predictive relevance must be
greater than zero for the endogenous constructs in the model (Hair et al. 2011). In estimating the predictive relevance, we used a
blindfolding procedure to obtain the QSquared of the endogenous constructs (Hair
et al. 2011).
Figure 1 and Table 4 show the results
of the structural model estimations without
a mediator (i .e., control contestabil ity).

Clearly, our results show that the predictive
relevance (Q-squared) is above zero (i.e.,
0.031), supporting the model’s validity. Interestingly, our results show that family involvement in management has a positive and
statistically significant (p<0.01) relationship
with the firms’ performance (see Table IV),
thus hypothesis H1 is not supported. That is,
our results show that the market exhibits a
positive view of the Malaysian Chinese
owner-managed firms, although corporate
practitioners perceived that the expropriation
of minority shareholders by the controlling
shareholders is prevalent in Malaysia. This can
be explained by the fact that strong control
over their firms enable Malaysian Chinese
family owners to be directly involved in such
negotiations, and contract enforcement is
weak in the Malaysian context because of the
weak legal institutional settings (Claessens
and Fan 2002). Thus, the positive impact of
the aforementioned family involvement in
management outweighs the appropriation
concerns of the firms’ resources in the Malaysian Chinese owner-managed firms.

Figure 1. Structural Model without Mediator (Model 1)
Family Involvement
in Management

0.087***

Ownership
Concentration

0.169***




Firm Performance

0.058
Board
Independence

Note: ***/**/* significant at the 0.01/0.05/0.10 error level respectively; control variables are included but not
presented in this figure

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Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015

Table 4. PLS Structural Model Results of Model 1 (without mediator)
Endogenous Constructs
MB
Relation
Conc→MB
FIM→MB (H1)
Bind→MB
LEV→MB
CAPEX→MB
Size→MB

R2
0.071
Path Coefficient
0.169***
0.087***
0.058
0.103
-0.093***
-0.125**

Std. Errors
0.040
0.033
0.099
0.063
0.034
0.056

Q2
0.031
t-Value
4.252
2.616
0.583
1.632
2.716
2.235

Note: ***/**/* denotes 1%/5%/10% error levels; year variables are included but not presented in the table.

Table 5 and Figure 2 show the results
of the full path model with the mediator. The
results show that the families’ involvement
in management has a negative and statistically significant relationship (p<0.01) with
control contestability (see Table 5), thus hypothesis H2 is supported. Additionally, control contestability in the ownership structure
has a positive relationship (p<0.01) with
firms’ performance.
With regard to the mediation analysis,
we observed that the path coefficient of family involvement in management and firms’
performance changes from 0.087 (p<0.01) in
Model 1 to 0.101 (p<0.01) in Model 2. Followi ng guidelines by Baron and Kenny
(1986), we concl uded that the control
contestability exhibits a partial mediating role
on the relationship between the families’ involvement in management and their firms’
performance. We also performed the Sobel
test and found that the mediating effect of
control contestability is statistical significance at the 1 percent error level (i.e., Sobel
test-statistic =-3.085) and thus provided support for H3 (see Table 6). Our results show
that the indirect effects of family involvement
in management on the firms’ performance via
the mediator construct (i.e., control contest-

ability) is -0.045 whereas the total effects of
family involvement in management on the
firms’ performance is 0.056 (see Table 6).
These results support our contention that the
non-dominant large shareholders suppress
family orientations in the owner-managed
firms. Family owners in owner-managed firms
also tend to restrict the control contestability
stemming from the non-dominant large shareholders to preserve their socioemotional
wealth. However, the presence of non-dominant large shareholders can induce effective
monitoring of the family owners in family
firms.
Table 5 shows that the ownership concentration has a positive and statistically significant relationship (p<0.01) with firms’
performance. This result contradicts prior
studies that used a broad-based sample (i.e.,
without distinguishing the ownership types)
when investigating the relationship between
the ownership concentration and firms’ performance in Malaysia (Tam and Tan 2007;
Liew et al. 2011). One explanation is that the
ownership concentration is the main driver
of Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs to commit to family businesses because their wealth
is linked to these firms’ performance. On the
other hand, our results indicate that board

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Goh et al.
Figure 1. Structural Model without Mediator (Model 1)
-0.252***


Contestability of
large sharholders

Family Involvement
in Management

0.177***
0.101***

Ownership
Concentration

0.292***





Firm Performance

0.058
Board
Independence

Note: ***/**/* significant at the 0.01/0.05/0.10 error level respectively; control variables are included but not
presented in this figure

Table 5. PLS Structural Model Results of Model 2 (with mediator)
Endogenous Constructs
MB
Contest
Relation
Conc → MB
FIM → Contest (H2)
FIM → MB (H1)
Contest → MB
Bind → MB
LEV → MB
CAPEX → MB
Size → MB

R2
0.086
0.063
Path coefficient
0.292***
-0.252***
0.101***
0.177***
0.070
0.119*
-0.095***
-0.147**

Std. Error
0.051
0.040
0.032
0.050
0.098
0.064
0.033
0.059

Q2
0.046
0.057
t-Value
5.670
6.349
3.130
3.530
0.719
1.862
2.886
2.501

Note: ****/**/* denotes 1%/5%/10% error levels; year variables are included not presented in the table.

Table 6. Analysis of Mediating Effects
Source Construct
Family involvement in management

272

Target Construct = Firm Performance
Total Effect
Direct Effect
Indirect Effect
0.056
0.101
-0.045

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2015

independence yields a non-significant effect
on the firms’ performance. The findings could
be attributed to the dominant position of the
family owners, who regard outside directors
as a source for advice and counselling, but
not for monitoring. Additionally, independent
directors may receive weak institutional support in performing their monitoring of the
firms in Malaysia (Peng 2004; Porta et al.
1998).
The control variables show few interesting findings (see Table 5). The results suggest that the firms’ investments have a negative and statistically significant relationship
(p<0.01) with the fir ms’ perfor mance,
whereas the firms’ leverage shows a positive
and statistically significant (p<0.10) relationship. In addition, the firms’ size has a negative and statistically significant relationship
(p<0.05) with firms’ performance. These results suggest that although investors are generally positive about the use of the firms’ leverage in business operation, they are sceptical about management in regard to the firms’
size (sales and assets) in Malaysian Chinese
firms. One potential explanation is that bigger firm sizes may be attributed to the higher
capital expenditure, which may not translate
into higher profit margins. Malaysian Chinese
entrepreneurs who emphasize the value of
security may adopt conservative investment
strategies in lowering the firms’ investment
risks rather than maximizing the firms’ value
(Au and Kwan 2009).

Conclusion
This paper explores how the preservation of socioemotional wealth can be manifested in the control and corporate governance of Malaysian Chinese firms. The findings are as follows. First, we showed that family involvement in management exhibits a

positive relationship with the firms’ performance. Second, control contestability stemming from non-dominant large shareholders
mediates the relationship between the families’ involvement in management and the
firms’ performance. Third, the market perceives non-dominant large shareholders as a
monitoring mechanism of family controlling
shareholders in Malaysian Chinese firms.
Overall, we show that Malaysian Chinese
entrepreneurs prioritize their control in ownermanaged firms because they want to preserve
their socioemotional wealth. We interpret
that Malaysian Chinese entrepreneurs, who
operate under a hostile business environment,
prioritize their control of their firms. Thus,
‘life-raft’ values’ are still held by Malaysian
Chinese entrepreneurs in owner-managed
firms.
This paper makes three contributions to
the literature. First, it sheds light on how
socioemotional wealth can be manifested in
the control and corporate governance of firms
in a transition economy. Because the socioemotional wealth in family firms has been
largely studied in advanced economies, it may
be interesting to explore this issue in emerging economies with hostile business environments in state-directed economies. Specifically, socioemotional wealth suggests family
owners prioritize their families’ interests, but
we found that the benefits of family involvement in management outweighed the appropriation concerns of the firms’ resources in
Malaysian Chinese owner-managed firms.
Second, we provide evidence that ingrained ‘life-raft values’ among overseas Chinese entrepreneurs can be associated with the
preservation of their socioemotional wealth.
Stated differently, this study represents the
first attempt to offer the linkage between
socioemotional wealth and ‘life-raft values’
in overseas Chinese family businesses.
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Goh et al.

Third, this study represents the first attempt to show that control contestability
mediates the relationship between family involvement in management and firms’ performance.
Finally, this study was to some extent
limited by the hostile business context for
Malaysian Chinese family firms. It is conceivable to suggest that family businesses are af-

fected by institutional environments and cultures with regard to the preservation of
socioemotional wealth. Future research can
be extended to family businesses in other
emerging and advanced economies to investigate the reactions of family owners in response to the threat of non-dominant large
shareholders to their control of their firms.

Acknowledgement
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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