Title: The impact of CEOs' personality on socio-emotional wealth and competitiveness improvement of family-owned SMEs

Authors: Verónica Janneth García-Ibarra; Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi

Addresses: CENTRUM Catolica Graduate Business School, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Lima, Peru ' IPADE Business School, Mexico City, Mexico

Abstract: Socio-emotional wealth has been considered the most important differentiator of the family firm as a unique entity. In this study, we examine the relationships between CEO personality (emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion), socio-emotional wealth, and family firms' competitiveness improvement using a sample of 352 small and medium-sized family firms from Ecuador. The data were processed in SPSS using hierarchical regressions. Results showed a positive and significant relationship between the CEO's extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience with both socio-emotional wealth and family firms' competitiveness improvement. However, in the case of emotional stability and conscientiousness, the results were not statistically significant regarding socio-emotional wealth and competitiveness improvement. Our research contributes to the current literature by highlighting how each dimension of a CEO's personality either enhances or inhibits the competitiveness improvement of family-owned SMEs.

Keywords: CEO personality; emotional stability; agreeableness; openness to experience; extraversion; conscientiousness; socio-emotional wealth; SEW; competitiveness improvement; family-owned SMEs; Ecuador.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2024.137887

International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 2024 Vol.41 No.4, pp.435 - 460

Received: 13 Oct 2021
Accepted: 05 Apr 2022
Published online: 08 Apr 2024 *

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