Socioemotional wealth, entrepreneurial orientation and international performance of family firms

This paper analyses the relationships between the socioemotional wealth, entrepreneurial orientation and international performance of family firms. This research is pioneering in that it seeks to explain the international performance of family firms from the non-economic perspective of entrepreneurial orientation determined by socioemotional wealth. Second generation structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 3.2.8 software was applied to data from 106 Spanish family firms. The study shows that considering socioemotional wealth substantially improves the capacity of entrepreneurial orientation to explain variation in the international performance of family firms. When only entrepreneurial orientation is included in the model, the explained variance of international performance is 34.2%. However, when socioemotional wealth is included in the model as an antecedent of international performance, the explained variance increases to 42.6%.