Abstract: Based on the questionnaire survey data of family business in manufacturing industry in Zhejiang and Chongqing, this paper aims to explore the relationship between network and performance of family firms, and to analyze the moderating effect of social emotional wealth between the two. The results show that the network centrality and density of family firms have significant positive influence on their performance, that the more stronger the protection of social emotional wealth is, the less the positive effect of family firm’s network centrality on its performance will be, and the more the positive effect of network density on its performance will be, and that in high-density network, the network centrality will have an even less positive effect on its performance.

Key words: family firm; network structure; corporate performance; social emotional wealth