Is socioemotional wealth being influenced by the intentions to pursue succession on incumbent owners? Empirical research on Mexican family business

Purpose - The authors identify the theoretical constructions measuring the intentions to pursue succession as well as the socioemotional wealth theoretical framework, and the authors propose an objective of testing the relationships existing between them so as their importance giving evidence of their relevance. Design/methodology/approach - It is a research with a positivist philosophical position measuring in a quantitative way with a deductive and structured approach applied to 98 CEO owners of Mexican companies, using nonparametric methodologies the authors simulated subsamples with structural equation modeling in SmartPLS 3.3.2, the metrics on the model are described as a functionalist paradigm. Findings - Directors' attitudes paired up with the intentions of succession are significantly related to the socioemotional aspect of the family business; although the theory proposes three aspects to measure these intentions, the social norm in this research has not been strong enough to be a predictor as an influence on the company's socioemotional wealth. Originality/value - The authors found this a valuable paper for the complement of theory focused on purely manifesting aspects in family companies, because they identified theoretical and empirical relationships opening up guidelines for new research in socioemotional aspects in accordance with the entrepreneurs attitudes to achieve succession, the differentiation lies in measuring psychological aspects of the director's behavior toward succession and not to the successionper se as done in most research; also, the methodology of data analysis facilitates the reader to easily recognize the relationships between the proposed theoretical constructions, showing the detailed metrics development by researchers in the family business field.