EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

When do Non-financial Goals Benefit Stakeholders? Theorizing on Care and Power in Family Firms

Melanie Richards ()
Additional contact information
Melanie Richards: Technical University of Munich (TUM) School of Management

Journal of Business Ethics, 2023, vol. 184, issue 2, No 2, 333-351

Abstract: Abstract Research studying the effects of non-financial goals on stakeholder relationships remains inconclusive, with scholars disagreeing on which goals increase or decrease a firm’s proactive stakeholder engagement (PSE). Instead of examining which goals act as forces for good or evil, we shift the focus of recent discussions by emphasizing the mechanisms that can explain the positive and negative stakeholder outcomes of non-financial goals under the umbrella of one theoretical lens. We do so by introducing an ethics of care perspective. Specifically, we first show that four of the five most distinctive non-financial goals of family owners jointly stipulate care-based morality, which likely enhances PSE. However, we subsequently argue that one goal, namely, the wish to exert power and influence, interacts with other goals and related care-based morality to lower PSE. Finally, we show how female family directors temper these interactions. Our insights into the additive and interactive effects of non-financial goals on PSE contribute to corporate social responsibility research, to the organizational goal literature, to family business studies and to work drawing on care ethics in management studies.

Keywords: Ethics of care; Family firms; Non-financial goals; Proactive stakeholder engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-022-05046-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:184:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05046-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-022-05046-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:184:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05046-9