Kinship and Gender in Family Firms: New Insights Into Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Abstract

We extend relational demography theory by introducing kinship as a new demographic characteristic of categorization. We theorize that family firm employees’ kinship similarity (family vs. nonfamily), kinship tie (child vs. other familial relationship), and gender (female vs. male) uniquely affect their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Data collected from 209 family CEO–employee dyads indicate that male family employees, especially sons of the CEO, display the highest OCB when altruistic leadership behavior is high, whereas daughters and other female family employees display consistently high OCB, confirming that employees’ experiences in family firms are simultaneously shaped by their kinship characteristics and gender.