AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
development in free flow of goods and capital on the single
market. One of the further motives small and medium-sized
business penetrate the international markets is the opportunity to
participate in networking (Havierniková et al. 2018), which has a
long tradition in developed economies. Horská et al. (2018)
added that a key to success in the 21st century is to seek and
create competitive advantages that act as a prerequisite for the
future success. According to the authors, the company’s decision
to enter international market is in close relation to management
philosophy of the business oriented at territorial expansion of the
business. In order to succeed in international environment it is
necessary to optimize all business management tools and
marketing tools as well (Kusá, 2010).
The problem of internationalization is examined particularly on
the example of transnational enterprises. Less attention is
devoted to internationalization process of small and medium-
sized businesses, and even less attention is paid to family
enterprises on international markets. This article would also like
to present up-to-date data of a primary survey focusing on the
internationalization effort of this specific group of enterprises.
Several foreing authors can be find addressing the issue of
internationalization of family enterprises. The influence of
family on internationalization process of the business was
addressed by Claver et al. (2010) and Monini et al. (2010).
Models of internationalization and strategies applied by small
and medium-sized businesses were addressed by Rexhepi et al.
(2017), Suman, S. (2017) or Ubrežiová and Hotzinger (2015).
The analysis provided by the authors has led to formulate a
number of issues to be addressed by companies
internationalizing their business activities. The most important
are the following: more and more businesses are directly or
indirectly forced to penetrate international markets, where they
can optimize the redistribution of their production; the
international markets provide an opportunity to apply
differentiated strategies to address new segment of customers;
expanding business activities results in increased cooperation
with new foreign partners; small businesses are provided an
opportunity to respond more flexibly to the needs of the foreign
market compared to large enterprises; internationalization of the
business activity requires specific knowledge about the target
market and up-to-date information about the current situation
and the possible future development scenarios. Companies in
certain phase of their development and lifecycle have to make
decisions that move them out from stagnation and can provide
possibilities for growth (Novotná et al., 2015). Such an
opportunity is the penetration of the international markets, which
is associated with new opportunities to operate in a new business
environment with a possibility of utilizing the market gap.
However, business owners must bear in mind the need for
greater security and caution (Korauš et al., 2017) in the
international environment that results from inadequate
information about the market, intense competition and the lack
of knowledge about business partners etc. We often face the fact
that family business is owned and run by female entrepreneurs.
Female entrepreneurs show different attitude towards problem
solution, they are more hard working and cautious (Sulikova,
Strazovska, 2016). They show less willingness to take risk and
therefore there is a presumption that they feel more confident as
entrepreneurs in domestic environment.
The expansion of entrepreneurial activities i.e.
internationalization is about conducting activities beyond the
borders of the home country, crossing regional borders and being
represented in different sectors of the national economy.
Entrepreneurship is even getting more and more difficult in the
domestic environment, this is the reason businesses are
considering expanding their activities to other countries. While
conducting business in international business environment, it is
important to respect several aspects of the international
environment e.g. international business practices, the political
and economic differences, the cultural diversity etc.
Internationalization is not a simple process. It takes place in the
world economy as a result of international division of labour and
the international economic interdependence. International
entrepreneurship is a gradual expansion of business activities
beyond the domestic market that results in more complicated
trade relations. Penetration of international markets is
fundamentally the strategic decision of the company
management. The company should coordinate the entry into new
markets and implement these activities gradually. The
internationalization of business activities starts with a simple
form of expansion on foreign markets e.g. exports (Ključnikov
and Popesko, 2017), and continues with more sophisticated
forms of market entry e.g. licenses, joint ventures etc.
(Milosovicova et al., 2018). The penetration of foreign markets
requires a change in management, logistics, marketing and other
activities that need to be addressed special attention (Khúlová,
2016). Professional experience of the older generation might be
useful for the younger generation (Volodymyrivna et al., 2016;
Koráb, 2014), especially in the field of customer relationship
management, analytical approach to the market, establishing new
business partnerships and so on. The generation gap and
replacement of different positions might also be a specific
problem of family businesses. Some of the companies
underestimate the importance of these changes that can result in
failure entering the international business environment. There
are basic rules applied in international entrepreneurship, which
acts as a prerequisite to succeed in international market
environment. These are the following e.g. cultural traditions and
practices (Šenkár, 2018), international business ethics, global
principles, interconnectedness of the markets ant their mutual
interaction. Last but not least, the human resources are at the
forefront in both the commercial and public sector (Ciobanu a
Androniceanu, 2018), as well as their role is essential in
conducting business activities both on domestic and international
markets (Lorincova, 2018).
3 Data and methodology
The evaluation of entrepreneurial activities of family businesses
found in scientific literature is primarily elaborated on
theoretical level, less attempts can be found on practical level.
Even the theoretical elaboration of the issue is not at a sufficient
level considering the domestic scientific literature. Adequate
foreign literary sources we can find about the family
entrepreneurship. Therefore, one of the partial objectives of this
article is to widen the theoretical background with a particular
focus on internationalization of family enterprises. The second
sub-goal is to identify the motives that incentivises the family
businesses to enter the international market. The main objective
is to explore the measure of internationalization in the sector of
family businesses on a selected research sample. The article
provides an up-to-date information on theoretical background of
the discussed issue with a help of domestic and foreign scientific
literature, while bringing the most up-to-date information from
the terrain. We obtained empirical data during the realization of
an 18-month research, with a focus on internationalization of
business activities of family enterprises. We applied a
questionnaire survey in Western Slovakia. We used a random
selection of enterprises using the Finstat database. A total of 450
business entities were approached, representing the small and
medium-sized business sector in Bratislava, Trnava, Nitra and
Trenčín regions. During the initial selection process, we selected
the businesses with family business character. Subsequently, we
reduced the sample to 250 family enterprises willing to
participate in the research. Not all of the businesses were willing
to answer all the questions involved in the survey and therefore
the incomplete questionnaires had to be excluded in order to
maintain the objectivity of the research. The final statistical file
was made up of 240 family businesses. Advanced statistical
methods, Chi-Square Test and Friedman test were applied to
process the obtained empirical data.
Chi-Square Test expressed as the following:
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