Purpose Family firm legacy has recently emerged as an important construct in management research, reflecting families' aspirations to preserve and transmit symbolic, social, material and entrepreneurial meanings across generations. While prior studies suggest that legacy orientation shapes strategic priorities, long-term decision-making and organizational change in family firms, there is still a lack of systematic knowledge regarding the family-related and organizational conditions under which a strong legacy orientation emerges. To address this gap, this study adopts a configurational perspective to examine how alternative combinations of organizational and family conditions foster strong legacy orientation in family firms. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on a global sample of 758 family firms from the STEP Project Global Consortium, we employ fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to explore how different configurations of CEO gender, generational stage, family ownership structure and firm size are associated with strong legacy orientation. Findings The results reveal five distinct configurations associated with strong legacy orientation, highlighting multiple strategic pathways through which family firms preserve and reinterpret meanings across generations. Our findings demonstrate that there is no single universal pathway to strong legacy orientation. Instead, legacy emerges through heterogeneous and equifinal combinations of family and organizational conditions. Originality/value By showing that strong legacy orientation is not an automatic manifestation of familiness or socioemotional wealth preservation, but rather contingent on strategic logic emerging from alternative configurational arrangements, this study advances organizational and change management research and contributes to the growing literature on legacy in family firms. The findings also provide practical insights for family firm owners and advisors seeking to design governance and ownership structures that support intergenerational continuity and long-term strategic coherence.
Fernández‐Yáñez et al. (Wed,) studied this question.