Internationalisation of Family Business: The Effect of Ownership and Generation Involvement - Research Paper Example

However, the study applies key constructs within the entrepreneurship field and entrepreneurial orientation in family firms. Introduction Family farms have established a unique area in research that witnessed exponential growth in the past few years because family firms represent many businesses worldwide. In organizational research, corporate governance is a common topic in the field; however, many corporate governance researches focus on board of directors but in recent past governance research expanded to cover other areas such as ownership and generation involvement.

In publicly held firms, ownership and management are distinctly separated; however, family businesses are closely held because ownership and board within family businesses overlap because people from the same family are involved at various levels in the business. There is relatively little knowledge on the relationship between family business ownership, governance and international expansion because previous research focus on industry conditions as well as competitive forces. Nevertheless, recent studies emphasize the need to evaluate ownership and governance, which resulted in the necessity to identify and examine unique resources and capabilities attributed to family ownership that lead to competitive advantage in international family businesses.

The study builds on a stream of research by considering how ownership and governance are associated with internationalization of family owned businesses