Introduction

Abstract

This dissertation aims at contributing to explaining how an individual executive's personality and emotional traits influence their decision making and leadership behavior. Understanding executive decision making and leadership behavior is crucial to understanding processes leading to firm performance (Bass, Avolio, Jung, & Berson, 2003; Miller, 2008; Simsek, Heavey, & Veiga, 2010; Yammarino, Spangler, & Bass, 1993). Upper echelons theory finds that executives are influenced by their personalities when making strategic decisions, and understanding which aspects of their personalities support decision making and leadership behavior beneficial to firm performance is valuable but still lacking (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Hambrick, 2007; Hiller & Hambrick, 2005). This may be due to unanswered questions in three distinct areas: First, research on the personality of executives has mainly considered separate aspects of personality, despite interaction effects between personality variables may distinctively change the nature of a given personality trait's influence (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007; Simsek et al., 2010).