Family Owned Business Institute

Research Scholar's Abstracts 2006 - W. Dyer

The Evolution of Social Responsibility in Family-Owned Firms
W. Gibb Dyer
2006

Is family ownership and management a significant determinant of social responsibility? This study proposes to examine the population of family firms found in the S&P 500 from 1991-2005 in order to answer this question.

order to accurately gauge Corporate Social Performance (CSP), firms must be tracked over a significant time period (1991-2005). A crucial research question to investigate is whether CSP declines the further a firm moves away from the founder and family ownership and management.

This socially responsibility and performance will also be tracked in the behavior of non-family S&P firms over the same time period to compare the social performance of family and non-family firms.