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Introduction
Family firms are organizations "governed and/or managed with the intention to shape and pursue the vision of the business held by a dominant coalition controlled by members of the same family or a small number of families in a manner that is potentially sustainable across generations of the family or families" ([13] Chua et al. , 1999, p. 25). These organizations are representative of the majority of businesses in the world and play a significant role in the GDP of their countries ([5] Astrachan and Shanker, 2003; [27] Ifera, 2003). Although some family firms often outperform their non-family counterparts ([1] Anderson and Reeb, 2004), one of the greatest challenges that family businesses face is the transition of ownership and management across generations ([17] De Massis et al. , 2008; [33] Le-Breton-Miller et al. , 2004). Previous research has indicated that only one-third of the family firms make it to the second generation, and about 15 percent make it to the third generation ([7] Birley, 1986; [50] Ward, 1987). Thus, a lot of the research in the family business discipline has explored the factors that affect the ability of these firms to transition between generations.
There are different explanations for why family firms have difficulty being viable across generations. In work summarizing the factors that prevent succession, [17] De Massis et al. (2008) suggest that five general factors prevent intra-family succession in family firms: individual factors (i.e. issues related to the successor and predecessor), financial factors (i.e. availability of financial resources for the firm to succeed), contextual factors (i.e. changes in the environment in which the organization operates), process factors (i.e. presence of processes that outline the succession process), and relational factors (i.e. relationship dynamics between family and non-family members involved in the firm). This paper focusses on relational factors. We explore how the way family members manage their emotions (i.e. their emotional intelligence (EI)) affects interpersonal dynamics that may lead to negative conflict in a family firm and later affect the succession process.
Although conceptual work has highlighted the importance of family dynamics (i.e. the patterns of interactions and relationships between family members) to the success of the family business, there has been less empirical research that explores family relationships and how they...