Motives and Behaviours of Financial Leaders in Austria

The role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) as a Financial Leader encompasses much more than the mere mastery of the financial issues of an organization. The personality and the leadership style of CFOs have gained little attention so far although the need for a better understanding of behavioral aspects of Financial Leadership clearly exists. This paper and the underlying research attempt to fill this gap by measuring the motives and personalities of Austrian CFOs. Pioneering work on measuring personality has been done by David McClelland, who identified three human motives including power, achievement, and affiliation-intimacy. In order to measure these three motives, David G. Winter developed "motive imagery", a method of measuring content for the above mentioned motives. It is therefore the purpose of this paper to gain insight into the motivation and personality of Austrian CFOs by analyzing 31 interviews with Austrian CFOs. The findings will provide information about the dominant motives of Austrian CFOs and contribute to a better understanding of the behavioral aspects of Financial Leadership.