Organizational Psychological Capital in Family Firms: the Role of Family Firm Heterogeneity

Abstract

Organizational psychological capital—comprising hope, confidence, resilience, and optimism—is a vital resource for family firms in times of stress. Surprisingly, whether and how family firm idiosyncrasies impact organizational psychological capital remains unclear. Considering the theoretical paradigm of socio-emotional wealth, we investigate two important family firm characteristics as antecedents of organizational psychological capital: the family involvement in the top management team and the generation of the family firm. We further propose that these relationships are moderated by a board of directors’ tenure. Based on an empirical analysis of listed U.S. family firms, our results confirm a negative relationship between family membership in the top management team and organizational psychological capital. In addition, we find that descendant family firms exhibit higher levels of organizational psychological capital than founder family firms. The results also confirm the moderating role of board tenure. This study works toward a more holistic view of family firm heterogeneity and specifically how different types of family involvement shape a firm’s positive strategic resources.