Listening to the Heart or the Head? Exploring the “Willingness Versus Ability” Succession Dilemma:

Incumbents typically seek a highly committed and at the same time highly competent child as a successor, yet such a candidate is often not available. Extant literature is unable to predict which desired attribute-commitment (i.e., willingness) or competence (i.e., ability)-is most important in this dilemma. Drawing from institutional logics literature, we suggest that the incumbent's personal experiences, education, and cultural embeddedness, as much as firm-level situational stimuli, direct incumbent attention to either corporate logic, favoring competence, or family logic, favoring commitment, to guide decision-making about which family member to choose as a successor. We test our hypotheses using policy capturing with responses of 1,060 family firm owner-managers, and contribute to research on succession, family firms, and institutional logics.