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Internationalisation and Family Involvement: A Stewardship Approach in the Hotel Industry

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Abstract

This study analyses how family involvement influences the internationalisation strategies of the Spanish hotel industry. Adopting a family heterogeneity approach, we identified some factors (family ownership and management, family CEO and generation) that can affect the degree of internationalisation and the entry mode choice. From the stewardship theory we propose several hypotheses in order to test the relationship of these factors with the internationalisation strategy. The results confirm a positive relationship between family ownership and management, family CEO and later generations with the level of internationalisation of Spanish family hotels. In addition, family ownership, family management and the presence of a family CEO are positively associated with high-control entry modes, whereas the later generations seem to opt for non-control entry modes, maybe because the divergence of interests increases with the passing of generations.

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Rienda, L., Claver, E., Andreu, R. (2021). Internationalisation and Family Involvement: A Stewardship Approach in the Hotel Industry. In: Leppäaho, T., Jack, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Family Firm Internationalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66737-5_2

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