Ownership Strategy and Foreign Affiliate Performance in Multinational Family Business Groups: A Double-edged Sword

Abstract

We argue that ownership strategies can be a double edged sword for multinational family business groups from emerging economies and the performance of their affiliates located abroad. We test an integrated framework based on internalization and agency theory on a longitudinal dataset of multinational family business groups from Taiwan. We find evidence for the contingent impact of cultural differences and family management on the association between ownership strategy and affiliate performance. While direct ownership is seen as offering more control over the affiliate, we show that this comes at a performance cost for affiliates in culturally different host countries and affiliates under family management. Indirect ownership seems to be one way to positively influence affiliate performance in culturally distant countries, but seems not to be contingent on family management utilization.