Leadership learning among next-generation family leader: the conditioning role of altruism and nepotism

Within the family business literature there have been increasing calls to understand how individual actions of family members can increase understanding of family businesses’ distinctive characteristics and behaviours. This paper examines one type of micro-foundational activity, that is next-generation’s leadership learning, in three Chinese family firms. We introduce the term family conditioning to describe the effect of specific family-related practices (altruism and nepotism) on next generation leadership learning where this can be understood as a set of family-related micro conditions/factors that condition individual learning.