The bright side of authoritarian leadership in family firms: An emotional attachment perspective on innovativeness

This article explores how innovativeness in family firms is affected by the family's leadership style (that is, authoritarian leadership). Given the heterogeneity of family firms across the world, we consider the moderating effect of emotional attachment of family members to the family business and investigate how this relationship varies across emerging and advanced economies, using a sample of 1,267 family firms across 56 countries. Although authoritarian leadership often has negative associations, our results indicate this may not be the case in the context of family firms where an authoritarian leadership style reinforces strategic activities necessary for firm innovativeness. Additionally, our findings suggest that when a family firm is characterized as having an authoritarian leadership style with a strong emotional attachment by the family, that innovativeness is more positive in both emerging and advanced countries.