Abstract

Most firms across the globe are owned and managed by family members, and family firms are critical to most economies (Morck and Yeung 2003; Perman 2006; Sharma, Chrisman, Pablo, & Chua 2001). Accordingly, family business researchers strive to understand factors that contribute to family business success. Studies have uncovered important factors at the environmental- (e.g., culture), firm- (e.g., resource and governance), and individual- (e.g., relational or personal) levels (Filser, Kraus, and Mark 2013; Long and Chrisman 2013; Nordqvist, Wennerg, and Hellerstedt 2013). One particularly fruitful avenue of inquiry involves identifying family leaders’ unique psychological traits and the consequences of these traits for key family business outcomes (i.e., Filser et al. 2013; Nordqvist et al. 2013).