Family firms’ orientation towards non-financial goals and their idiosyncratic characteristics make their internationalization processes unique. In a similar vein, they also differ in establishing business networks and developing embeddedness over time. Hence, we outline a single case study of the internationalization and network embeddedness processes of a 5th generation Italian family business operating in the wine industry. In so doing, we aim to investigate how embeddedness and internationalization processes co-evolve over time, and thus identify the interdependencies and interactions emerging between the two processes. Based on our case findings, we advance a three-staged process model of network embeddedness in the context of a family firm’s internationalization process. We found that the family firm’s pursuit of socio-emotional wealth (SEW) creates some dialectical tensions between different stages of the two processes, locking family managers in a condition of over-embeddedness. With the present study, we seek to contribute to the intersection of the IB and family business literature, by integrating insights from a SEW perspective into social embeddedness theory in the context of a family firm’s internationalization.

In this paper, we investigate the different types of liabilities that network organizations face when developing in the home and host countries. Drawing from IB literature, we built a longitudinal case study of a French organization who has developed a network of 27,000 ambassadors to promote the city of Lyon. The empirical study is based on 41 interviews with managers, partners and ambassadors of the organization, observations over a seven-year period and secondary data. Our findings show that network organizations who develop domestically and internationally have to deal with the liability of smallness, but also with another form of liability that we call the liability of largeness. We propose a three-stage model that can help network organizations to overcome both the liabilities of smallness and largeness. Our study provides novel insights into the liabilities faced by network organizations.

This study combines network characteristics from the social network theory and the resource-based view of the firm to examine how internationalizing SMEs can leverage their knowledge networks for improved international performance. Utilizing partial least structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) on a unique data set derived from social network analysis (SNA) of Finnish internationalizing SMEs' knowledge networks, this research contributes to the international business (IB) literature in several ways. First, by applying a structural view of networks, it advances the understanding of valuable external knowledge sources by demonstrating how partners' network characteristics are associated with knowledge accumulation. Second, by focusing on the resources obtained from networks, it offers a nuanced understanding of how network structure associates with SMEs' international performance outcomes. Third, it demonstrates SNA as an effective method for analyzing networks in the context of SME internationalization. The findings provide valuable insights into how SMEs can strategically leverage their networks to support international expansion.

We investigate the reasons why some firms, called born globals (BGs), can quickly expand their foreign sales. International entrepreneurship (IE) scholars believe that BGs are high technology firms founded by internationally oriented entrepreneurs leveraging their foreign networks. Hennart (2014) and Hennart, Majocchi and Hagen (2021) advance that fast foreign growth can be explained by the firm’s business model (BM): slow-internationalizing ones have a mass market BM, while BGs have a global niche one. Internationally-experienced founders are not necessary. We investigate what accounts for differences in the speed at which a sample of Italian startups ramped their foreign sales. We use fuzzy-set Quantitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to allow for the simultaneous presence of more than one explanation. We find that there are two configurations of antecedents that allow a firm to become a BG: In one, consistent with Hennart (2014), BGs are high-tech startups with a global niche BM. In the other, they do not have a strong niche BM and are low technology. International networks are antecedents in both configurations but, contrary to the predictions of the IE literature, the international experience of founders is not.