Background:The family business is one of Sweden’s most common business forms, making up 90% of all firms and institutions. Also, it accounts for more than a third of GDP. So, it plays a vital role in the economy in Sweden. However, most of the family businesses are relatively small.

Purpose:This paper aims to explore and understand the internal growth barriers to the small Swedish family business.

Method:A qualitative method inspired by the inductive approach was conducted through semi-structured interviews with five owners of small family businesses in Sweden. The data were analyzed through three steps of general analytical procedure, which are (1) data reduction, (2) data displays, (3) conclusion and verification.

Conclusion:This study concludes several internal growth barriers that affect the small Swedish family business: having only revenue goals, long-term growth goals, no written form of goals, family-oriented goals, unawareness of owner to change the firm’s structure during the growth, owner’s tendency to control all activities, owner prefers to keep the business smaller to keep control, the owner has more than one role and task, shortage of competencies and skills, unqualified successors and family members are welcome, lack of robots and Knowledge, owners have another job, different tasks, and roles, family business offers services of high quality that need time, selecting the oldest son to take over regardless of his competencies, employees’ attitude towards obeying a female owner, successors have no interest in taking over, no successors, rivalry among siblings and conflict of their interest, high arguments, different goals of family members from different generations, employ the first non-family member employee, employed more people, fear that non-family employees are less interested in FB or that more employees lead to loss of control, not able to employ more people and finally risk-avoiding behaviour. These barriers resulted in: hindering strategic changes in the needed time, innovation changes in the market obstructed, goals are forgotten, lack of competencies and skills, increases workload and challenges for the male manager, not responding to the market changes quickly, impossible to manage everything effectively, decrease control, not employing needed employees, responsibilities and roles on the owner increase, decrease integrity and harmony in the family, and finally, not developing the products, assisting more customers, and focusing on the growth. Consequently, lead to selling the firm and not keep it for a long time, slow growth, do no maximize potential growth, growth affected negatively, growth hindered, stay in the same size, avoid growth chances, or miss growth opportunities.