Validating the FIBER scale to measure family firm heterogeneity – A replication study with extensions

Abstract

The number of studies referencing socioemotional wealth (SEW) stands in stark contrast to the number of papers actually employing direct and multidimensional measures of SEW. Despite the FIBER scale reaching its tenth anniversary, and despite a preliminary validation by Hauck et al. (2016), the direct measurement of SEW has nevertheless been met with remarkable conservatism. This is counterintuitive, given the frequent demand for a validated, direct, and multidimensional SEW scale of practical length. In this paper we replicate and extend the first validation of the FIBER scale, undertaken by Hauck et al. (2016). Our results offer an improved (short) scale that is validated with psychometric rigor (N = 1019) and demonstrates generalizability.