Corporate Boards, Female Critical Mass and CSR: Does the Family Firm Status Matter?

The main purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the impact of a critical mass of female directors on the firm’s CSR performance, focusing on whether the effect of a female critical mass on CSR is moderated by the family firm status. In order to test this hypothesis, we perform an OLS regression on a sample of 76 Italian publicly listed firms for the year 2019, We find that, on the one hand, a female critical mass is associated with a better CSR performance, and that family firms have a lower CSR performance than nonfamily firms, but on the other hand we find that when family firms have a female critical mass on the board their CSR performance improves. Overall, these findings support the conclusion that the effect of a female critical mass on CSR performance is influenced by the family firm status. This research may contribute to both the literature on board gender diversity and to the literature on family firms by providing evidence that family ownership is a contingency variable that positively moderates the effect of a critical mass of female directors on the CSR performance of firms. In terms of practical implications, this finding provides a starting point for family owners and managers to review the composition of their board in view of the CSR results they want to achieve. This finding may be also of interest for institutional investors who are increasingly using CSR performance as a proxy for good management and long-term goals, and that therefore should consider the findings of this study when looking at the factors that can shape the CSR performance of family firms.