Family firms and international equity-based entry modes: a systematic literature review

Purpose – Although research on family firms (FF) internationalization has seen a boom over the past 30 years, the understanding of how FFs internationalize with equity modes is still fragmented. Indeed, the majority of extant literature on this topic identifies internationalization with export, overlooking the alternative equity-based entry modes FFs have when entering a foreign country. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap with a framework-based systematic literature review on the topic to improve the understanding of this phenomenon and propose a way forward. Design/methodology/approach – This study conducted a framework-based systematic literature review of 93 papers published between 1993 and 2021. Findings – This study adds to the current debate on FFs internationalization by integrating previous review efforts with a deeper investigation of FFs’ equity-based entry modes. This study contributes to this body of knowledge in the family business research by synthetizing and systematizing extant literature with a framework-based approach from the international business (IB) field. In so doing, this study builds a stronger link between these two areas of research. Finally, research gaps and promising research avenues for future studies are also presented. Originality/value – This study responds to the call to create a dialogue between the FFs and IB fields by systematizing the extant body of knowledge and integrating the FF literature with one of the most widely used frameworks (Pan and Tse, 2000) on entry modes in the IB domain.