How family firm characteristics affect internationalization of Chinese family SMEs

This study investigates the effect of family characteristics on the internationalization activities of Chinese family small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using a socioemotional wealth perspective. We suggest that family ownership negatively affects international expansion. Results using a sample of 1542 Chinese family SMEs support our hypothesis that there is a negative relationship between family ownership and international activities. Due to mixed findings in previous studies, we not only focus on both export intensity and export propensity, but also introduce family firm characteristics (i.e., presence of founder CEOs and family succession intention) as moderators. We argue that these moderators capture a temporal aspect of socioemotional wealth (SEW) and find that they strengthen the negative relationship between family ownership and internationalization. Our study contributes to family firm internationalization research by disentangling the relationship between family firm characteristics and internationalization, as well as SEW research.