Shedding Light on the Founder’s Influence: Development of a Scale to Measure Employees Perceptions

The founder’s influence in the business long after her/his departure is a recurring notion in family business but also an unexplored aspect that warrants further scrutiny. In this article, we introduce the concept of “founder’s shadow perception”, which is mainly characterized by high levels of founder’s influence in the organization’s daily life long after his physical departure. The founder’s shadow scale is tested rigorously, through a total of three studies (total N = 792), we develop a scale to measure the construct, establish its psychometric properties, through the application of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques, which led to a multidimensional scale (founder’s shadow) comprising four dimensions: (1) fatherly figure; (2) founder admiration; (3) mimicking leadership; (4) stakeholder’s relationships. The scale demonstrates high levels of reliability. We discuss the wide applicability of the scale and a variety of research opportunities.