The impact of CEOs' personality on socio-emotional wealth and competitiveness improvement of family-owned SMEs

Socio-emotional wealth has been considered the most important differentiator of the family firm as a unique entity. In this study, we examine the relationships between CEO personality (emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion), socio-emotional wealth, and family firms’ competitiveness improvement using a sample of 352 small and medium-sized family firms from Ecuador. The data were processed in SPSS using hierarchical regressions. Results showed a positive and significant relationship between the CEO’s extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience with both socio-emotional wealth and family firms’ competitiveness improvement. However, in the case of emotional stability and conscientiousness, the results were not statistically significant regarding socioemotional wealth and competitiveness improvement. Our research contributes to the current literature by highlighting how each dimension of a CEO’s personality either enhances or inhibits the competitiveness improvement of family-owned SMEs.