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Extant literature on foreign entry increasingly recognizes firms’ heterogeneity as a potential reason for inconsistency in results on the establishment mode choice, that is, whether and under which conditions firms should choose to enter a new country through a greenfield investment or an acquisition. Our study contributes to this debate by identifying family ownership and family involvement in management as potential powerful sources of such heterogeneity. Integrating international business studies with both corporate finance literature on family firms and recent contributions from the Socio Emotional Wealth perspective on family ownership, we claim that, due to greater risk aversion and lower access to information, the family involvement both in the firm ownership and management leads to a higher propensity towards greenfield initiatives (vs acquisitions). However, we also find that such a propensity decreases with international experience especially in family-owned firms given the greater ability of professionalized management to overcome family-related concerns on making acquisitions. Our analysis on 1045 foreign initiatives undertaken by 311 Italian family and non-family firms between 2003 and 2013 confirms our expectations, indicating family ownership as a significant driver of firms’ international strategies.

Family involvement and firms’ establishment mode choice in foreign markets