Family Ownership and SME Performance: A Moderated Mediation Model of Internationalization and Institutional Ownership

This study draws on stewardship and agency theories to examine the impact of family ownership on the performance of family small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the mediating impact of internationalization, and the moderating impact of institutional ownership. Additionally, by integrating the mediating and moderating impacts, we propose a moderated mediation model for the performance of family SMEs. This study argues and finds in a study of listed Korean family SMEs that family ownership promotes performance. In addition, SMEs with high family ownership have the high performance at low levels of internationalization, low performance at medium levels of internationalization, and high performance again at high levels of internationalization. Institutional ownership also acts as a positive moderator in the family ownership-internationalization relationship and through both low and high levels of internationalization, and the positive indirect impact of family ownership on performance is stronger when institutional ownership is high.