Family Firm Leader’s Socioemotional Wealth Importance Perceptions: The Influence of Negative Forms of Conflict

We investigate how negative types of intra-family conflicts (i.e., status conflict and relationship conflict) influence the family firm leader’s socioemotional wealth importance (SEWi). Based on 159 matched responses from family firm leaders and next-generation family members in Turkish family firms, we hypothesize that these intra-family conflicts are negatively related to the SEWi of the family firm leader. We identify the family firm leader’s succession intention and intergenerational authority as moderators of the relationship between conflict and SEWi. While status conflict has a negative effect on the family firm leader’s SEWi, with succession intention serving as a moderator, relationship conflict affects SEWi only in conjunction with the moderator of intergenerational authority by alleviating the negative effect of relationship conflict on SEWi. We contribute to both the conflict and SEW literature by showing that intra-family conflicts can be important antecedents for SEWi.