This paper conducts an empirical study as to whether family firms are more socially responsible than their nonfamily counterparts and explores the conditions in which this difference in social behavior occurs. We argue that family firms, given their socioemotional wealth bias, have a positive effect on social dimensions linked to external stakeholders, yet have a negative impact on internal social dimensions. Thus, family firms can be socially responsible and irresponsible at the same time. We also suggest that institutional and organizational conditions act as catalysts in the relationship between firm type and corporate social responsibility (CSR). General support for our thesis that family firms neglect internal social dimensions came from the study of a sample of 598 listed European firms over a period of 4 years. Moreover, while national standards and industry conditions influence the degree of CSR in nonfamily firms, these factors do not affect family firms. However, family firms' social activities are more sensitive to declining organizational performance.

Our paper seeks to further understand the influence of gender board diversity on firms' corporate social performance (CPS) in the context of publicly-held family firms. Grounded on corporate governance and family firm literature, we argue that the influence of women directors on CSP will be contingent on their relative power and legitimacy within the board, and that such dynamics are particularly important in family firm boardrooms. Our empirical results show that increases in CSP associated to the presence of women in the boards of family firms are due mainly to the presence of outsider nonfamily and insider family women directors. Implications for the theory of family firms are discussed.

This paper examines how socio-emotional factors can influence family firms' commitment to entrepreneurially-oriented activities, and how their level of commitment is moderated by the technological intensity of the sector and firm performance. We find that, while family firms are less entrepreneurially-oriented than nonfamily firms, this gap closes with increasing technological intensity of the sector. We find no evidence, however, to suggest any change in entrepreneurial orientation in family firms resulting from a drop in firm performance.

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