CEO's empathy and salience of socioemotional wealth in family SMEs - The moderating role of external directors

Sanjay Goel, Wim Voordeckers, Anita van Gils, Jeroen van den Heuvel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

A focus on preserving socioemotional wealth may influence entrepreneurial activities in family firms. In this paper, we identify the emotion of empathy in the family CEO as an antecedent of socioemotional wealth creation. We argue that the presence of one or more external directors can have a direct as well as moderating influence on the relationship between CEO's empathy and the salience of socioemotional wealth to the family CEO. Our empirical tests confirm these hypotheses. Several areas of future research are suggested to incorporate empathy and other emotions in family business studies.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)111-134
Number of pages24
JournalEntrepreneurship and Regional Development
Volume25
Issue number3-4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2013

Bibliographical note

Copyright:
Copyright 2013 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • CEO empathy
  • board of directors
  • family businesses
  • socioemotional wealth

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