Abstract
To ensure business continuation, Family Businesses (FBs) need to have in place succession plans and successor selection processes. The succession debate is one of the most researched areas in FB, but studies have mostly focused on incumbent or successor points of view. Literature suggests employees’ perception, acceptance, participation, and influence are significantly in ensuring smooth leadership transition and employee commitment to strategic decisions. Several theories offer explanations for why individuals might prefer to work for a man leader than a woman. However, this article makes a unique contribution to the FB literature by extending the gender preferences that have been developed in the management and the physiological literature to the examination of preferences to work for a woman from the family or outside of the family. It examines how kinship ties, gender, experience, and education in FBs relate to perceptions of female leaders as new successors across 256 employees.