IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v51y2009i3p462-483.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A silent revolution: The internationalisation of large Spanish family firms

Author

Listed:
  • Nuria Puig
  • Paloma Fernandez Perez

Abstract

This article studies the dominant role played by large family firms in the internationalisation of the Spanish economy. Based on new empirical evidence from circa 150 historical and internationalised family firms, the article integrates concepts and theories from recent literature on internationalisation, international entrepreneurship, sociology, and family business. The main argument is that in Spain, as in other European, South American and Asian countries, the integration of most of the leading family firms in the global market has been the outcome of a long learning process strongly influenced by the country's natural and human resources, institutional framework, and regional patterns of economic development and business cultures. In contrast with other countries, however, foreign capital and technology and collective action at regional, national and international levels play a far more important role in the internationalisation of large family firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Nuria Puig & Paloma Fernandez Perez, 2009. "A silent revolution: The internationalisation of large Spanish family firms," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3), pages 462-483.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:51:y:2009:i:3:p:462-483
    DOI: 10.1080/00076790902844088
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076790902844088
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00076790902844088?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jones, Geoffrey, 2002. "Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199249992, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:ise:gheswp:wp532014 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Fuentes-Lombardo, Guadalupe & Sanchez-Famoso, Valeriano & Cano-Rubio, Myriam, 2023. "Reasons for internationalisation of family business," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    3. Jean-Luc Arregle & Francesco Chirico & Liena Kano & Sumit K. Kundu & Antonio Majocchi & William S. Schulze, 2021. "Family firm internationalization: Past research and an agenda for the future," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(6), pages 1159-1198, August.
    4. Cirer-Costa, Joan Carles, 2012. "Bases del proceso de internacionalización de las cadenas hoteleras de las Islas Baleares [Bases of the globalisation of the hotel chains of the Balearic Islands]," MPRA Paper 37210, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. João Carlos Lopes & Amélia Branco & Francisco Parejo & José Francisco Rangel, 2016. "Determinants of Success and Failure in the Internationalization of the Cork Business: A Tale of Two Iberian Family Firms," Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics, in: Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin & Hakan Danis (ed.), Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics - Vol. 2, edition 1, pages 417-440, Springer.
    6. Mikel Alayo & Txomin Iturralde & Amaia Maseda & Gloria Aparicio, 2021. "Mapping family firm internationalization research: bibliometric and literature review," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(6), pages 1517-1560, August.
    7. Stough, Roger & Welter, Friederike & Block, Joern & Wennberg, Karl & Basco, Rodrigo, 2015. "Family business and regional science: “Bridging the gap”," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 208-218.
    8. Sanchez-Famoso, Valeriano & Cano-Rubio, Myriam & Fuentes-Lombardo, Guadalupe, 2025. "Relational capital’s contribution to international success: Evidence from family-owned wineries and olive oil mills in Spain," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    9. Metsola, Jaakko & Leppäaho, Tanja & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, Eriikka & Plakoyiannaki, Emmanuella, 2020. "Process in family business internationalisation: The state of the art and ways forward," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(2).
    10. Cornelius Hafner, 2021. "Diversification in family firms: a systematic review of product and international diversification strategies," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 529-572, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grazia Ietto-Gillies, 2011. "The Integration and Fragmentation Roles of Transnational Companies," Chapters, in: Miroslav N. Jovanović (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Integration, Volume III, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Ilgaz Arikan & Oded Shenkar, 2022. "Neglected elements: What we should cover more of in international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(7), pages 1484-1507, September.
    3. Khadija Straaten & Rajneesh Narula & Elisa Giuliani, 2023. "The multinational enterprise, development, and the inequality of opportunities: A research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(9), pages 1623-1640, December.
    4. Christos N. Pitelis & David J. Teece, 2010. "Cross-border market co-creation, dynamic capabilities and the entrepreneurial theory of the multinational enterprise," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(4), pages 1247-1270, August.
    5. Kojo S. Amanor, 2019. "Global Value Chains and Agribusiness in Africa: Upgrading or Capturing Smallholder Production?," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 8(1-2), pages 30-63, April.
    6. Sam Jones & Peter Gibbon, 2022. "What drove the profitability of colonial firms?: Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920-74)," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-70, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Grazia Ietto-Gillies, 2011. "Strategies of Transnational Companies in the Context of the Governance Systems of Nation-states," Chapters, in: Mehmet Ugur & David Sunderland (ed.), Does Economic Governance Matter?, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:51:y:2009:i:3:p:462-483. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.