Fight or flight? Understanding family firm internationalization when the rules of the game change

Abstract

Building on the mixed gamble perspective, we examine family versus nonfamily firms’ propensity to increase or decrease their internationalization in response to different sources of risk. Our framework explains how a firm's mixed gamble calculus of internationalization can change as it adjusts to business, industry, and institutional circumstances. Using an unbalanced panel of 1031 publicly traded firms from 11 European countries over a 15-year period, our study offers unique insight on why firms, depending on their degree of family ownership, calculate the mixed gamble of internationalization differently and why they vary in their decisions to expand or withdraw from internationalization. Our study makes an important step toward a better understanding of internationalization strategy in family firms, clarifying the mechanisms behind whether they choose to protect and ‘fight’ for their domestic market thereby reducing their internationalization scale or prefer to escape from the uncertainty and turbulence and ‘flee’ toward international markets.