The Palgrave Handbook of Family Firm Internationalization


Book Description

Family Firms (FFs) form the majority of all firms around the world and they account for an enormous percentage of the employment, the revenue, and the GDP of most capitalist countries. While MNCs have long been thought of as the main contributors to international business, it is now recognised that a substantial number of family firms are active in the international arena. This handbook focuses on the features which make family firm internationalization unique. Chapters provide FF specific theories and cover the process of FF internationalization. It examines the role of network ties and provides an insight into the development of family firms that have grown into big multinationals. Importantly this Handbook equips you with a better understanding of specific features of family firms as they internationalize from or to Asian or emerging markets. Family firms offer a fruitful context to study internationalization through a process perspective, therefore this Handbook is an invaluable source of knowledge for students, scholars and policy makers in the areas of family business, entrepreneurship and internationalization.




Family Firm Internationalisation


Book Description

Drawing on a series of case studies from Finland, this book examines the role of networking in the internationalisation process of family firms. Providing a comprehensive overview of recent literature alongside the empirical analysis of 24 family firms, the authors use theoretical concepts from family business research to create a model specifically for the internationalisation and networking of family firms. An insightful read for those interested in international and small business, this book offers practical implications for the successful internationalisation of family firms and sets the agenda for future research in the field of family business.




Research Anthology on Strategies for Maintaining Successful Family Firms


Book Description

Family-owned businesses account for many of the small and medium-sized enterprises that exist around the world in various industries. Due to their unique make up, these firms are often heavily influenced by family dynamics that must be reconciled by family and non-family workers alike in order to ensure the sustainability of the business. As smaller businesses competing against an increasingly globalized economy and more directly impacted by economic instability, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, these businesses must continue to improve their practices and processes in order to not only survive but thrive. The Research Anthology on Strategies for Maintaining Successful Family Firms discusses the strategies, sustainability, and human aspects of family firms in order to understand what sets them apart from other businesses and how they can survive and compete in a globalized economy. This book discusses the unique dynamic brought by family firms that offers both opportunities and challenges for a growing business. Covering topics such as corporate venturing, the family unit, and business ethics, this text is an essential resource for family firms, entrepreneurs, managers, business students, business professors, researchers, and academicians.




Cases on Internationalization Challenges for SMEs


Book Description

With the globalization process, firms are seeking to expand their activities to international markets but are also “feeling” expanded competition from abroad. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), though seeking to expand abroad, have particularities that hinder their natural international expansion path due to particular barriers and challenges that most multinational firms have already overcome. Cases on Internationalization Challenges for SMEs provides a set of case studies on the internationalization of SMEs in order to share the latest empirical research findings in the field of internationalization in the context of a globalized world, and which considers a highly competitive international business setting. This includes examining the main reasons for the success or failure of the process of internationalization of SMEs and their inherent activities. Covering topics that include competitive advantage, export performance, and inward internationalization, this book targets managers, executives, and entrepreneurs concerned with how to adapt their companies to a fast-changing international business environment, how to conduct internationalization strategies, how to choose the most adequate international entry modes, and how to adapt their products and strategies to international markets. It is also suited for academicians, researchers, and students in the field of management.




Family Multinationals


Book Description

In contrast to widespread assessments that family enterprises lack sufficient resources and capabilities to go global, many family companies are competing successfully in an increasingly globalized business environment. Worldwide, a large number of thriving multinationals are still family-owned and/or under family control. While there is abundant literature on the phenomenon of globalization from many different disciplines, neither the literature on multinationals nor the growing field of family business studies have systematically investigated family multinationals yet. This volume is one of the first to deal explicitly with family multinationals and the role of the family in internationalization. It situates itself at the crossroads of internationalization studies on the one hand and family business research on the other. Why do families continue to play such a large role in some of the most prominent firms in emerging and mature economies? How did they manage to maintain ownership control, yet divest of unrelated business ventures? How did they internationalize yet maintain control? This book identifies the idiosyncratic strategies and structures of family multinationals in different countries and at different points in time. A comparative historical and case study approach allows us to explore the role of the family through the firms’ various internationalization pathways and understand long-term developments and path dependencies.




Family Entrepreneurship


Book Description

This book provides recent ideas, insights, facts, evidence, frameworks, and perspectives on how and why entrepreneurial families are successful over generations. The book focuses on how families successfully implement entrepreneurship across generations. That success, it argues, requires entrepreneurship at the level of the family, not only in the businesses the family owns and manages. Written by noted academics and consultants who are authorities on family entrepreneurship, the chapters provide a comprehensive exploration of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurial families, their motivations, how they behave over time, and, suggestions for how business families can encourage and sustain entrepreneurship. This comprehensive look at family entrepreneurship will serve as a fundamental reference text for family business consultants, owners, and scholars.




Management Controlling and Governance of Family Businesses


Book Description

This book addresses a selection of major topics in family businesses, namely ‘managerialization’ and ‘professionalization’, succession, internationalization, access to financial markets, and how governance and control systems can help family firms respond to common problems inherent in the business. Written by prominent experts, the respective chapters highlight the interactions between these topics in order to develop a systems view of the distinctive challenges, and of the potential roles that governance and control systems can play in these contexts. The book is divided into two main parts, the first of which reviews the current literature and develops a comprehensive theoretical framework. Based on these theoretical insights, the second part then interprets and discusses the empirical evidence, including case studies on family-run firms in Italy.




Key Success Factors of SME Internationalisation


Book Description

This collective book offers a cross-country perspective on the internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Scholars from prestigious institutions in Europe, North America, Australia and China provide new insights on how SMEs develop and perform their international activities.




Entrepreneurial Development and Innovation in Family Businesses and SMEs


Book Description

Entrepreneurship is very important for both entrepreneurs and economic development. It helps boost innovation and competitiveness in every country and facilitates the creation of new jobs and new opportunities, especially for family businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Both entrepreneurship and innovation constitute a subject that is both topical and timeless, since institutions and the various institutional processes have always affected a country’s sustainability. Entrepreneurial Development and Innovation in Family Businesses and SMEs is an essential scholarly publication that contributes to the understanding, improving and strengthening of entrepreneurial development, and innovation’s role in family businesses and SMEs by providing both theoretical and applied knowledge in order to find how and why entrepreneurship and innovation can produce inefficient and dysfunctional outcomes. Featuring a wide range of topics such as women entrepreneurship, internationalization, and organizational learning, this book is ideal for researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs, executives, managers, academicians, and students.




The Endurance of Family Businesses


Book Description

The Endurance of Family Businesses is a collection of essays offering an overview of the importance and resilience of family-controlled large businesses. Much of economic and business history research neglects family businesses, considering them an inefficient form of business organization. These essays discuss the strengths of family businesses: the ways family firms have managed, financed and governed their corporations, as well as the way in which they structure their relationship with the external environment, from the government to the company's stakeholders. Family businesses have learned new ways of organizing their resources and using their accumulated know-how for new markets and institutional environments. This volume combines the expertise of well-known scholars who specialize in business history, economic history, management and consulting, to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on family businesses. Contributors provide a global view by taking into account Asian, American and European experiences.