Family Governance and Home Country’s Family Collectivism in Internationalization: A Meta-Analysis of Family Firm Heterogeneity

Family firms are not a homogeneous group. Thus, we theorize and empirically validate how governance differences among family firms (family governance heterogeneity) influence internationalization, considering the home country’s level of family collectivism as a moderator. Drawing on the bifurcation bias approach, we conduct a multilevel meta-analysis on 33,493 family firms. Our findings suggest that family CEOs and greater family involvement on the board hamper internationalization, but family collectivism improves these relationships. In contrast, non-founding generations promote internationalization independently of this country-level moderator. Our study reconciles the theoretical and empirical inconsistencies in the relationship between family governance and family firm internationalization.