Abstract: Strategic change is an important means for enterprises to maintain their own sustainable competitive advantages, and it is of great significance to family businesses whose goal is to have a long-lasting business. Taking China’s A-share family listed companies as samples and based on the theory of identity, this paper explores the influence of family identity of executives on corporate strategic changes and focuses on the moderating effect of institutional efficiency. The results of the empirical test show that family identity can effectively promote family businesses to implement strategic changes. For family businesses located in areas with higher institutional efficiency, family identity has a more significant positive effect on strategic changes. The results of the mechanism test show that family identity can promote the implementation of strategic changes mainly from the two aspects of willingness (risk-taking and intergenerational inheritance) and ability (legitimacy and financing constraints). It is found from the expansion analysis that the positive impact of family identity on strategic changes is more significant in the context of a large educational gap between the chairman of the board and the general manager, a small age gap, and the same gender. From the perspective of family identity, this study analyzes the decision-making motive, the situational mechanism and the influencing path of family business strategic reform, which expands the related researches on the strategic reform of family business.

Key words: family identity, strategic changes, system efficiency