Socioemotional Wealth and Family Firms’ Internationalisation

This thesis explored family firms (FFs) internationalisation. I used socioemotional wealth because it captures the non-financial nature of FFs. I conducted thirty-five interviews with a sample of manufacturing firms in West Bengal, India, and utilised an interpretive case study approach. I used Template analysis to analyse the data. My findings illustrate that a family’s joint living, goodwill, networks, emotional consequences, and planned succession—affect the internationalisation of FFs. Sustainable capital is also an important aspect in FFs’ internationalisation, combining financial and non-financial criteria for the internationalisation These findings contribute to our understanding of the ‘reference point’ of behavioral agency theory.