2010/03/01 by Pascual Berrone, Cristina Cruz, Luis R. Gomez-Mejia +3 · 30 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Family Business Performance and Succession #Corporate Finance and Governance #Corporate Taxation and Avoidance
paper · doi:10.2189/asqu.2010.55.1.82
This paper compares the environmental performance of family and nonfamily public corporations between 1998 and 2002, using a sample of 194 U.S. firms required to report their emissions. We found that family-controlled public firms protect their socioemotional wealth by having a better environmental performance than their nonfamily counterparts, particularly at the local level, and that for the nonfamily firms, stock ownership by the chief executive officer (CEO) has a negative environmental impact. We also found that the positive effect of family ownership on environmental performance persists independently of whether the CEO is a family member or serves both as CEO and board chair.