Corporate Governance Challenges and Proposition of Internationalization Model Adoption for Family Owned Businesses in Nigeria

Abstract

The internationalization of family businesses as being impeded by corporate governance structure has been a controversial subject theme in developing economies; especially Nigeria as family businesses contributes a reasonable proportional percentage to the national gross domestic product (GDP). The essence of internationalizing a family business to become global business has been the interest of most business founders in Nigeria as the purpose of establishing such business are usually short-range to financial sustainability and business continuity as only a few firms outlived the death of their founder due to lack of proper standard governance structure that can make the businesses to be perpetual. The research is qualitative in nature as it tries to explore the internationalization models on internationalization which includes the progressive, contingency and interactive models that are suitable, available and adoptable for a large family business concern that desires to go international by working on their corporate governance and strategy adoption. The paper ponders on the governance challenges of family owned businesses and probable techniques to adopt to go international. The paper therefore acclaimed that business founders should be visionary in their affairs and applaud initiatives that have the capacity to make their firms to be internationalized.