The Effects of Goal Orientation and Client Feedback on the Adaptive Behaviors of Family Enterprise Advisors

Family enterprise advisors work on complex and unique problems for their family enterprise clients. Little attention has been given to these professionals and their abilities to provide innovative solutions. In this study, our aim is to understand more about family enterprise advisors (N = 231). To achieve this objective, we hypothesize that the effects of advisor goal orientation (i.e., learning orientation, proving orientation, and avoidance orientation) on adaptive behaviors (i.e., personal bricolage and individual innovative behavior) are mediated by the quality of feedback received from clients. The results indicate that quality of feedback partially mediates the relationships between goal orientation and these behaviors. We conclude by providing a practitioner model explaining how advisors may adapt to different family enterprise client role environments.