Abstract
Using qualitative data from 23 CEOs and 76 additional internal stakeholders in 23 family firms, we develop grounded theory about how top executives respond to stakeholder claims and how they prioritize such claims in decision-making. Despite the importance and difficulty of prioritizing stakeholder claims when they have disparate identities and goals, little research has focused on those top executives who must do so. Our study documents how top executives responses are both sensitive and non-sensitive to the stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency and identify a typology of four response patterns by which family firm CEOs prioritize stakeholder claims.