Paternalistic leadership in family firms: Types and implications for intergenerational succession

• We examine how predecessor's different paternalistic leadership styles influence family successor's beliefs in family firms.
• Accurate scenarios of successor's intentions and behaviours related to the success of the leadership transfer are formulated.
• Benevolent and moral paternalistic leadership style of the predecessor have a positive effect on successor's behaviour.
• Authoritarian paternalistic leadership style of the predecessor have a negative effect on successor's behaviour.

This article demonstrates how the various paternalistic leadership styles practiced by predecessors influence the attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control of successors in family firms and the extent to which these factors influence a successor's perceptions of the quality of the succession process. Stemming from the theory of planned behaviour, our conceptual model integrates previous findings into a comprehensive, two-sided analysis, capturing factors associated with the outgoing and incoming generation. We use the central construct of paternalism to formalise more accurate scenarios of a successor's intentions and behaviours related to the transfer of leadership. This study serves as a foundation for future empirical studies investigating the effects of paternalism in the family business context.