What drives family SMEs to internationalize? An integrated perspective of community institutions and knowledge resources

Abstract

Previous studies on the internationalization of family-owned small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have emphasized governance factors or national-level institutions but have largely neglected the critical role of community institutional contexts and their interactions with intrafamily knowledge resources. We argue that community family logic shapes the socioemotional wealth pursuits of family SMEs and drives them to avoid internationalization and that superior knowledge resources in families could moderate this relationship. The empirical results, which are based on a sample of 3439 Chinese family SMEs, support our hypothesis.