Influence of the lack of a standard definition of “family business” on research into their international strategies

Abstract

tResearch into the internationalisation strategies of family businesses is plagued by the excessive use ofmany and varied concepts to define these companies, and often leads to diverse and disparate results. Theconceptual spectrum used by researchers is very broad, ranging from the simplest definition, in which acompany is classified as a family business on the basis of the perception of its owners and/or managers, toothers which consider variables such as ownership, management, involvement of the family in the busi-ness, continuity and combinations thereof. The results obtained highlight the need for those researchingfamily business internationalisation strategies to use a standard definition of family business, so enablingus to continue advancing in our knowledge of this topic and avoid coming to different conclusions merelyas a result of having based our research on different definitions.