Content area
Full text
Keywords
Social responsibility, Small enterprises, The Netherlands
Abstract
This paper explores corporate social responsibility in family businesses. In particular, the research investigates family businesses in relation to a wide variety of constituent or stakeholder groups. It reports the preliminary results of focused interviews with 42 small and medium-sized Dutch family businesses. The data obtained from content analysis suggest that a mix of corporate social responsibility perspectives, help to explain the nature of relationships with, and behaviors toward, various constituency groups. The family character of the business most frequently impacts employee, client, and supplier relationships. Statistically significant interaction effects are reported for the following moderator variables: generation of the owner; company tenure in the community; community size; company size; and inclusion of the family surname in the business name. Interaction effects were also tested for industry type and gender. The paper also outlines some practical implications of the findings and suggests directions for future research.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1462-6004.htm
Introduction
This paper aims to expand the understanding of how small and medium-sized family businesses interpret their corporate social responsibility in relationship to a wide range of constituencies. Because specific work on the topic of family business and corporate social responsibility is limited (Vyakarnam et al., 1997), the research is exploratory in nature, drawing upon the broader literature on corporate social responsibility as well as the stakeholder approach to organization effectiveness. For the purpose of this research, corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers broadly to the level of contribution a company makes towards the betterment of society. Etzioni (1996) contrasts between companies that exhibit a competitive, individualistic orientation with those that prefer a communitarian perspective. The latter aim to balance the need for individual liberty with active maintenance of the community and society (Cornwall, 1998; Etzioni, 1993, 1996). Other researchers take a behavioral approach, identifying one or more behaviors thought to represent CSR, including economic benefits (Hemphill, 1997), conformance to ethical and legal expectations (Carroll, 1998), philanthropic and community involvement (Dutton, 1997) and social entrepreneurship (Prabhu, 1999).
Economic benefits describe an aspect of CSR behavior as supporting the community-at-large by creating wealth and value...