Family Social Capital and How it Affects the Family Firm Internationalization Strategy : An empirical study on the influence of family invovlement in family firms

Sammanfattning: Recently the research on family firm internationalization has begun to consider socioemotional criteria (Debellis, Rondi, Plakoyiannaki, & De Massis, 2021). The effect of family social capital on internationalization strategies has received limited attention in the family business research (Debellis, Rondi, Plakoyiannaki, & De Massis, 2021). There are studies that focus on social capital and what role that has on operations in family firms. There is also a considerable amount of research regarding internationalization aspects connected to family firms (Arregle, et al., 2021). However, studies that try to link internationalization strategy with family social capital are lacking. This paper aims to fill that gap. The purpose of this study is to research how family firms’ social capital affects their internationalization strategy. The research strategy for this study was a multiple case study, using grounded analysis to analyze the empirical findings. The empirical data for this study has been collected through 8 semi-structured interviews with 7 family firms operating on an international level. The findings of this study show that family firms with strong family governance and social capital positively support internationalization strategy initiatives, especially in the relational dimension of family social capital. The cognitive dimension was not directly linked to as many of the themes that emerged from the data analysis as the relational dimension, but still proved to be of significant importance in the development of internationalization strategies.