Factors determining exportation and internationalization in family businesses: The importance of debt

Abstract

This study focuses on the factors that may influence Spanish family owned businesses to decide to export and move towards internationalization, posing their level of debt as a possible determining factor. To do so, a review of publications on the subject has been carried out, as well as an empirical study using a sample of 1,846 businesses, which include both family and non-family firms. The results seem to show that the debt level of businesses whose propriety and management are handled by a family differs from that of those that do not fit this characteristic, especially where the decision whether or not to export products abroad is concerned.

The Role of Family Character in Cooperation Agreements

“…It is also noted that the percentage of non-family enterprises operating at both the national and international levels is considerably higher than in the case of FBs, and that these are generally smaller and older. These results agree with the previous literature (Graves & Thomas, 2008;Benito-Hernández et al, 2014;López-Cózar-Navarro et al, 2017). Table 5 presents the correlations between the different variables.…”

“…One of the common characteristics of the data set is that firms participating in the questionnaire are carefully chosen according to a selective sampling method. The SBSS database has already been used in previous FB studies (Surroca & Santamaría, 2007;Benito-Hernández et al, 2014;Nieto et al, 2015;López-Cózar-Navarro et al, 2017;Mazzelli et al, 2018). Table 1 shows the technical data.…”

“…The size (SIZE) and the age (AGE) of the company determine the initiatives carried out, since these variables generally represent the nature and amount of resources available (Benito-Hernández et al, 2014). Because smaller companies generally have fewer resources, they may seek cooperation to have access to the resources they lack.…”

“…Because smaller companies generally have fewer resources, they may seek cooperation to have access to the resources they lack. Following other studies on FBs, the variable size (SIZE) was measured by the logarithm of sales (Alberti et al, 2014;Classen et al, 2014) and the age variable (AGE) by the number of years since the firm's foundation (Benito-Hernández et al, 2014;Nieto et al, 2015). Table 2 provides a summary of the model variables.…”

“…Business cooperation is a widely discussed topic in the literature; however, few studies have focused on the specific case of the family businesses (FBs) and, moreover, there is no clear consensus on the relationship between cooperation and family character (Niemelä, 2004;Roessl, 2005;Pittino & Visintin, 2011;Classen, Van Gils, Bammens, & Carree, 2012;Franco & Haase, 2012;Pittino, Visintin, Bau', & Mazzurana, 2013;Alberti, Ferrario, Papa, & Pizzurno, 2014;Feranita, Kotlar, & De Massis, 2017). Given the importance of FBs around the world, and because their peculiarities make their strategic behavior different from that of other companies (Benito-Hernández, Priede-Bergamini, & López-Cózar-Navarro, 2014;De Massis, Frattini, Pizzurno, & Cassia, 2015;Padilla-Meléndez, Dieguez-Soto, & Garrido-Moreno, 2015), it seems relevant to develop an analysis in this research line (Feranita et al, 2017;Brinkerink, 2018).…”