ABSTRACT
Family social capital can become an inimitable source of competitive advantage. A longitudinal study by Salvato and Melin (2008) identified that the competitive advantage of successful family firms depends to a significant extent upon the strengths of their social capital. They concluded that the ability to reshape and attend to building social capital constantly is a significant source of competitive advantage. It can be consolidated by the next generation and their school friends and university attendance; by their securing jobs with competitors or suppliers. The family can build both breadth and depth of social capital within the business sector and community in which they operate. Local networks become constituencies of support, which can be more lasting and beneficial than securing high-level political access. These are not mutually exclusive strategies. We will use an emigration case to illustrate a more general strategy of how all our family owners use social capital as a strategy to succeed. Emigration is, from a social capital point of view, quite an extreme position a family puts themselves in as they leave a local network. Emigration and entrepreneurship accentuate and illustrate how important social capital is, and the link between social capital and emigrant entrepreneurs is important. Research shows that lack of employment opportunities is an important reason for immigrants starting new ventures (Zolin and Schlosser, 2011).
