Cruz Cristina, Milanov Hana, Klein Judit
Entrepreneurship and Family Businesses, IE Business School, C/Alvarez de Baena 4, ES 28006 Madrid, Spain.
TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 Munich, Germany.
J Bus Ethics. 2023 Jun 3:1-17. doi: 10.1007/s10551-023-05424-x.
Although most business-owning families (BOFs) that operate large family firms practice community social engagement both in private via family foundations and in the business domain via community corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, the relationship between their activities in the two domains remains unclear. Prior literature speculates that BOFs will deprioritize firms' community CSR when they have family foundations as more efficient vehicles to achieve socioemotional wealth (SEW), which would imply that such BOFs are less ethical in operating their firms. We contrast these speculations by enriching the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach with instrumental stakeholder theory and cue consistency arguments and theorize that BOFs seek to ensure consistency between their activities in the two domains. Using data from 2008 to 2018 on the 95 largest US public family firms whose BOFs also operate private foundations, we show a positive relationship between family foundation giving and firm community CSR activity. Furthermore, we provide evidence for the boundary conditions of this relationship, showing that it is weaker for firms that do not share the family's name and stronger for those firms with family leaders who also lead their families' foundations.
尽管大多数经营大型家族企业的企业主家庭（BOF）通过家族基金会在私下进行社区社会参与，并通过社区企业社会责任（CSR）项目在商业领域进行社区社会参与，但其在这两个领域的活动之间的关系仍不明确。先前的文献推测，当企业主家庭拥有家族基金会作为实现社会情感财富（SEW）的更有效工具时，他们会将企业的社区企业社会责任置于次要地位，这意味着此类企业主家庭在经营企业时道德性较低。我们通过用工具性利益相关者理论和线索一致性观点丰富社会情感财富（SEW）方法来对比这些推测，并提出理论认为企业主家庭试图确保其在这两个领域的活动之间保持一致。利用2008年至2018年期间95家最大的美国上市家族企业的数据，这些企业的企业主家庭也经营私人基金会，我们发现家族基金会捐赠与企业社区企业社会责任活动之间存在正相关关系。此外，我们为这种关系的边界条件提供了证据，表明对于那些不使用家族名称的企业，这种关系较弱，而对于那些家族领导人同时也领导其家族基金会的企业，这种关系较强。
