Corporate social responsibility and family firm performance: A meta-analytic review

Abstract

Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) has received considerable attention in family firms, empirical findings on the CSR/family firm performance nexus are mixed and inconsistent. This meta-analytic review aims to clarify the mixed results by establishing the degree to which CSR influences family firm performance and to test the moderating effects of contextual and methodological factors. Integrating a sample of 85 studies published up to May 2023 with 152,265 observations and employing a psychometric meta-analysis through bivariate and meta-regression analyses, we find that the average effect of CSR on family firm performance is positive, though small (≤0.20). Our study further reveals that CSR is positively and significantly related to financial performance, innovation, reputation, and sustainability, but the impact on firm sustainability is the largest. Our moderation analysis shows that the relationship between CSR and family firm performance is moderated by contextual factors (i.e., family ownership concentration, firm size, stock exchange listing, culture, and rule of law) and methodological factors (i.e., publication type, data type, performance proxy, and study type). Theoretically, our study appears to be the foremost meta-analytic review on the CSR/family firm performance relationship, as previous meta-analyses have focused on the drivers of CSR in family firms. Practically, we demonstrate that family firms can leverage CSR as both a “failure-prevention” strategy (i.e., survival strategy) and a “success-inducing” strategy (competitive advantage).