A taxonomy of small- and medium-sized international family firms

Bernhard Swoboda () and Edith Olejnik

Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 2013, vol. 11, issue 2, 130-157

Abstract: This study develops a taxonomy of small- and medium-sized family firms that internationalise and discusses the different configurations of these firms based on firm culture (in terms of organisational orientations), firm strategy (in terms of differentiation, cost leadership and marketing standardisation) and firm structure (in terms of integration, centralisation and specialisation). Although the literature on international family firms has highlighted the significant role of organisational culture in firm internationalisation, the strategies and structures of international family firms and their consequences for performance have been disregarded. To examine the interplay of international family firm culture, strategy and structure, we employ a quantitative taxonomic approach that is rooted in configurational theory, analysing 504 Germany-based small- and medium-sized family firms. Different combinations of strategy, structure and culture result in different configurations of family firms and different levels of non-domestic performance. In considering these configurations, we aim to determine which combinations of strategies, structures and firm orientations are primarily applied by international family firms and whether these organisational configurations are successful. Our empirical findings suggest that there are four groups of firms: Domestic-Focussed Traditionalists, Global Standardisers, Multinational Adapters and Transnational Entrepreneurs. These configurations are clearly distinctive in terms of their structure, orientations and performance but differ less in terms of their strategies. Superior international (i.e. non-domestic) performance tends to be driven by a decentralised entrepreneurial approach. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Keywords: Family firms; Internationalisation; SME; Taxonomy; Culture; Strategy; Structure; International performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10843-012-0101-x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jinten:v:11:y:2013:i:2:p:130-157

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ip/journal/10843/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10843-012-0101-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Entrepreneurship is currently edited by Hamid Etemad

More articles in Journal of International Entrepreneurship from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().