Leaders of Family Businesses and Their Team Roles

Ondřej Linhart and Petra Rydvalová

Central European Business Review, 2025, vol. 2025, issue 2, 119-137

Abstract: Leadership in family businesses has unique characteristics due to the special culture that family business carries, such as the special family bonds that the leader has with the team, the strong influence of the leader on the "family" team and the high level of dependence of the whole family on the business success. These traits should be reflected in the leader's approach towards teamwork. This research paper aims to identify these traits, more specifically, using the Belbin team role methodology, to identify which team roles are the most typical of family business leaders and which are rather rare or insignificantly represented. The Belbin Full Individual Report questionnaire was utilized, which compares self-evaluations with 360-degree feedback from four team members. Nine leaders of family businesses from the Czech Republic were analysed, and the results were subjected to a deeper statistical study with interesting findings. One of the main merits of this paper is the identification of the team roles Shaper, Coordinator and Resource Investigator to be typical for family business leaders, with the team roles Team Worker and Specialist being represented the least, which differs from the typical characteristics of a start-up leader; yet, an even deeper analysis with other results was carried out. Implications for Central European audience: The implications of this study for Central European family businesses are that leaders typically occupy team roles such as Shaper, Coordinator and Resource Investigator. The low inclination towards Team Worker and Specialist roles suggests a reliance on complementary team members to fill these gaps. These findings can inform leadership development and succession planning, highlighting the need for balanced team compositions. Also, these findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of how leadership roles are distributed and function within family businesses, providing a framework for future research into team dynamics, complementary team roles of other members and leadership effectiveness in this context.

Keywords: Family firms; leadership; Belbin team roles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M12 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.384

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