A gendered examination of heroic self-concept and letting go by family firm leaders

Abstract

In their groundbreaking study of family business leader succession, Sonnenfeld and Spence (1989) found that the heroic self-concept, consisting of heroic stature and heroic mission, prevents the incumbent patriarch from letting go (retiring, stepping aside). For all the impact that their study has had on succession scholarship, we assert that they failed to consider female family business leaders. We re-examine their findings, through a generalizability replication with extensions grounded in recent scholarship. We thereby extend the original study and broaden its reach, stressing the need for exploration of letting go by female leaders in family businesses. When introducing gender in the heroic self-concept/letting go relationship, we find that heroic mission and heroic stature are each significant to males, but not females, suggesting a gendered difference in letting go. Our analysis confirms the original study’s findings for male leaders and we expose limits to the generalizability of their work to female leaders.