The Corporate Social Responsibility of Family Businesses: An International Approach

International audienceThis study analyzes the links between listed family businesses and social responsibility. On the theoretical level, it establishes a relationship between socioemotional wealth, proactive stakeholder engagement, and the social responsibility of family businesses. On a practical level, our results (obtained from a sample of 363 companies) show that family businesses do not differ from non-family businesses in many dimensions of social responsibility. Moreover, family businesses have statistically significant lower ratings for four sub-dimensions of " corporate governance " , namely " balance of power and effectiveness of the Board " , " audit and control mechanisms " , " engagement with shareholders and shareholder structure " , and " executive compensation "