The multiple facets of family firms' social role: empirical evidence from Italian SMEs

The article explores the social role played by family firms, with some comparisons with non-family ones. Firms’ social role has been measured by various indicators like: contribution to employment, orientation to growth, propensity to give peer opportunities to men and women, capacity to help people manage the relationships between family and work, owning family’s philantrophic activities outside the family firms. All things being equal, the paper starts from two basic hypotheses: 1) family businesses feature higher levels of social role indicators with respect to non-family ones; 2) the stronger social commitment of family businesses is particularly evident in less developed geographical areas. Both hypotheses have been tested on a sample of 620 Italian family and non-family companies of small and medium size, representative of the manufacturing and non-manufacturing business population. They have been partially verified, particularly: family firms represent the biggest source of employment and they feature higher propensity to increase their number of employees; they offer women more opportunities both to make a career and to balance work and family; the resources they generate are often invested in philantrophy.