ABSTRACT

Business groups have risen to play essential roles in industrial development since the Second Industrial Revolution in the late nineteenth century. While business groups have been a crucial organizational form in many economies, they have been most resilient and remained dominant actors in contemporary emerging economies (Colpan et al., 2010; Colpan and Hikino, 2018a; Khanna and Yafeh, 2007). Business groups have generated an extensive and increasing literature that has mostly focused on their diversification strategies and pyramidal structures, and the performance implications of group affiliation (e.g., Carney et al., 2011; Cuervo-Cazurra, 2006, 2018a; Khanna and Rivkin, 2001; Morck and Yeung, 2003; see literature reviews in Colpan and Hikino, 2010; Colli and Colpan, 2016; Khanna and Yafeh, 2007). However, the literature has paid less attention to the internationalization of business groups as an organizational form, and to how companies affiliated with business groups are influenced by the parent organization in their internationalization (e.g., Guillen, 2000; Kumar et al., 2012; Tan and Meyer, 2010; Yiu, 2011; see a review in Yaprak and Karademir, 2010).