Corporate Social Responsibility of Large Family and Founder Firms

Abstract

Based on socioemotional wealth theory, we argue that family and founder firms differ from other firms with regard to corporate social responsibility concerns. We further argue that the ownership and management dimensions of founder firms have opposite effects. Using a dataset of large public US firms, we show that family and founder ownership is associated with fewer corporate social responsibility concerns (CSR concerns), whereas the presence of founder CEO is associated with more CSR concerns. We therefore conclude that it is reasonable to distinguish between family and founder firms and their respective ownership and management dimensions when analyzing CSR in large firms.

Keywords: Family firms, corporate social responsibility, founder firms, family ownership, family management, long-term orientation

JEL Classification: M10, M14