Research On The Influence Of Family Firms’ Internationalization Level On Cross-Border M&A Performance

Family firm is one of the oldest forms of organization,both traditional and modern.As an important part of Chinese private enterprises to promote the country’s economic development and provide a large number of jobs for the society.With the wave of globalization and the Chinese government’s various measures to encourage enterprises to go overseas,a large number of family enterprises have joined in the international operation,trying to find new growth points.One of the characteristics of family firms is that the motivation and starting point of business decisions tend to be to protect social emotional wealth rather than to maximize profits,which greatly affects the business decisions of family firms.Existing research on the internationalization of family businesses mainly focus on the possibility and time point of internationalization of family firm,and there is no research linking the internationalization level of family firms with the performance of cross-border mergers and acquisitions.Therefore,this paper hopes to provide some supplements for the existing research.This paper studies the impact of the internationalization level of family firms on their cross-border M&A performance by analyzing the successful acquisition of overseas firms by A-share listed family firms during 2010-2020.The results show that the internationalization level of family firms can improve the performance of crossborder mergers and acquisitions.Further combined with the sub-sample test,it can be found that the influence of the internationalization level of family firms on the performance of cross-border M&A is affected by the development level of the target country,the background of the management of family firms and the social relations of the firms,and the occurrence time of cross-border M&A.It is significant that the target party is in a developed country,the executive of the acquiring party’s family business has overseas background,the family business is politically connected,and the crossborder M&A occurred after the "Belt and Road" time point in the sample,and vice versa.At the same time,political association plays a positive moderating role in the influence of internationalization level of family firms on cross-border M&A performance.This paper takes Chinese family firms as the object and their cross-border merger and acquisition events as the sample,selects samples and data to carry out research,explores the influence of their internationalization level on their short-term performance in cross-border merger and acquisition activities,and pays attention to the moderating effect of political correlation.It has enriched the research on family firms in the Chinese context,supplemented the application of social emotional wealth theory in the research on cross-border mergers and acquisitions of family firms in China,expanded the research on the performance of family firms in cross-border mergers and acquisitions,and made some incremental contributions to the existing theoretical and empirical research.In addition,according to the conclusion,some suggestions are put forward for the government departments and family firms,which have some incremental contribution to the practical guidance.