Corporate social performance of family firms and shareholder protection: An international analysis

Atiqa Rehman, Halit Gonenc and Niels Hermes

Journal of Family Business Strategy, 2023, vol. 14, issue 2

Abstract: We study whether differences in shareholder protection by countries are important in explaining lower corporate social performance (CSP) of family firms vis-à-vis non-family firms. We create a dataset covering 46 countries for the period 2002–2016. Using a novel approach, we show that the difference in CSP of family firms relative to similar non-family firms is smaller when family firms experience stronger minority shareholder protection to reduce conflicts of interest than non-family firms do. Moreover, we find that the difference in CSP of family firms relative to similar non-family firms is larger when family firms experience stronger shareholders’ rights in corporate governance than non-family firms do. Our results support the view that differences in country-level shareholder protection play an important role in explaining the differences in CSP between family and non-family firms.

Keywords: Behavioral agency theory; Corporate social performance; Family firms; Shareholder protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:fambus:v:14:y:2023:i:2:s1877858522000742

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DOI: 10.1016/j.jfbs.2022.100550

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