Is Financial Reporting Quality Related to Corporate Social Responsibility Practices? Evidence from Family Firms

Abstract

The aim of this research is to highlight the relationship between financial reporting quality and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the family firm sphere. Using a database of 1275 companies for the period 2002–2010 and the GMM estimator of Arellano and Bond (1991) for panel data, our results show that those companies that report high-quality financial statements promote more CSR practices. However, this relationship is weaker in family firms which support the existence of an entrenchment effect that associates greater family ownership with poor-quality information. We argue that family firms differ from non-family regarding the effect of financial reporting quality on the level of CSR practices.