Family Business Characteristics and the Approach to HRM in Overseas Ventures

This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between family business (FB) and human resource management (HRM) abroad. Our analysis provides two main results. First, not all organizational attributes of FBs exert the same effect on the approach to HRM abroad. Whereas participation of family members in the board of directors displays no significant impact, ownership and family managerial models favor the exploitation of the human resources supplied by the parent company. In contrast, the involvement of young successors favors an explorative attitude. Second, a multidimensional approach has better explanatory power compared with a dichotomous classification of FBs.