The Role of Mood in Managing Small Businesses–Evidence from Dairy Farming

The aim of this paper is to explore how the mood of managers of small family owned firms influence oninvolvement from other family members, relations with business consultants, and the decision to maintainproduction. We randomly drew a sample of 90 dairy farmers who were visited and interviewed. First we did aqualitative analysis of the data and then we merged the interview data with a database showing who hadmaintained dairy farming six years after the interviews. Our results show that farmers in a happy mood get morehelp from the rest of the family in farming activities than farmers in a neutral or bad mood. Farmers in a badmood are less satisfied with the consultancy service than farmers in a happy or neutral mood. Six years after theinterview more farmers in a happy mood maintained dairy farming as compared to farmers in a neutral or badmood. Our findings are relevant to all managers of small family owned businesses.