A Governance Approach of Emotion in Family Business: Towards a Multi-level Integrated Framework and Research Agenda

Abstract

While emotion in family business is beginning to garner closer attention among researchers, the nexus of emotion management and governance has received little attention to date. In this essay, we reflect on and extend the Special Issue contributions by integrating the emotion management literature with the family business and governance literatures. We suggest a governance approach of emotion through a multilevel integrated framework. We introduce "emotion governance"as an overarching set of informal and formal mechanisms that are rooted and developed in the embedded family business contexts. We argue that emotion governance influences the explicit emotion management strategies of family business members at different stages: ex-ante (incentive alignment), during the process (education and support), and ex-post (monitoring). It thereby contributes to ensure their accountability in line with family business continuity. Considering the heterogeneity of family businesses, we capture nuances in our framework across family business archetypes through a series of propositions. We chart an agenda for future research to advance the development of a theory of family business governance inclusive of emotion.