Abstract :
Although many family businesses have chosen to undertake internationalisation processes, little is known about how the internationalisation-performance relationship is affected by the internationalisation path followed. This research is based on the theory of resources and capabilities, the unique set of business resources (familiness) and the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective. Based on a set of panel data from the Spanish survey on business strategies for small and medium-sized Spanish family businesses from 2005 to 2015, fixed-effect regressions were run on a sample of 285 businesses that followed the traditional path and 107 that followed the accelerated path, finding an inverted U-shaped curve for the traditional path and an inverted S-shaped curve for the accelerated path. Specifically, the accelerated path, not the traditional one, allows an increase in performance at higher levels of internationalisation. Byline: Oscar Javier Varas-Fuente, Raquel Arguedas-Sanz, Beatriz Rodrigo-Moya