Wim Voordeckers

The investment behavior of single-family offices (SFOs) reflects the coexistence of finance and family institutional logics, often generating tensions in investment decision-making. How SFOs reconcile these logics remains poorly understood. Adopting a sensemaking perspective, we conducted a multicase study of 10 SFOs based on 27 interviews with key decision-makers within the SFO. Our findings identify three sensemaking mechanisms – constructing meaningful engagement, making sense of wealth across time, and legitimizing professional governance – that shape SFOs’ investment behavior. By integrating institutional logics and sensemaking, this study advances research on family wealth management and hybrid investment strategies.

This study investigates why some family firms adopt zero-leverage policies by examining heterogeneity in their goals and governance structures. While prior research has largely focused on differences between family and non-family firms, we highlight the substantial variation within the family firm population itself. Drawing on agency theory and the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective, we integrate both economic and behavioural explanations of financing behaviour. Using survey-based measures of SEW importance (SEWi) combined with financial data from 248 Belgian private family firms, we provide the first direct test of SEW as a determinant of zero-leverage. Our results reveal that goal-based heterogeneity matters: certain SEW dimensions increase the probability of maintaining zero leverage, whereas others reduce it. Governance-related factors also play a role, as the presence of a non-family CEO and passive shareholders are positively associated with a zero-leverage stance. Moreover, by distinguishing between zero total debt and zero long-term debt, we capture differences in their respective drivers and interdependence. These findings show that financial conservatism in family firms cannot be explained solely by agency costs or classical finance theories. Instead, heterogeneity in family goals and governance provides a more nuanced understanding of zero-leverage adoption. The study contributes to research on capital structure, family firm heterogeneity, and behavioural finance, offering insights for both scholars and practitioners.

Trade credit is one of the primary sources of short-term financing, especially in family firms. However, trade credit can be expensive, with an implicit annual interest rate exceeding 40 %. From a theoretical point of view, cheaper short-term bank debt should then be preferred above trade credit. Surprisingly, the overall use of trade credit exceeds, by far, the use of short-term bank credit. Therefore, we investigate the antecedents of the intention to use expensive trade credit. Relying on the theory of honest incompetence, we argue that the CEO’s knowledge of trade credit determines the intention to use it. Additionally, we argue that even when the CEO is aware of the high costs related to trade credit, expensive trade credit may still be used in order to prevent sending negative signals towards the supplier. Our analysis, based on a sample of Belgian family SMEs, shows that knowledge of the cost of trade credit indeed negatively influences the intention to use trade credit.