CSR-ORIENTATION IN ITALIAN FAMILY FIRMS: DEPARTING FROM ENTREPRENEURIAL, FAMILY AND TERRITORIAL SHARED VALUES

The main objective of this paper is to identify the relationship between entrepreneurial and territorial values embedded in small and medium-sized family enterprises that facilitate the orientation towards corporate social responsibility and to examine their influence on mission-governance-accountability. The work aims to understand (and to re-evaluate) the role in promoting CSR and sustainability strategies of entrepreneurs and family SMEs which are profoundly rooted in the territory of operation and are often considered as being of “minor” relevance. Is the adhesion to the philosophy and to the practices of CSR reflected in a firm’s mission, governance and accountability? Which specific sustainability patterns of family SMEs and entrepreneurial values, attitudes and local socio-cultural factors does it depend on? This paper winds itself around these questions and describes, after a brief analysis of the literary framework on family SMEs and CSR, the principle findings that have emerged from a qualitative investigation focused on an exemplary Italian family SME in which the orientation towards CSR is reflected consistently in its mission, governance and accountability and is the result of entrepreneur and family values diffused and shared in the local socio-economic environment to which the entrepreneur, the family and the company are strongly rooted. The empirical study enables us to develop the following proposition: Among family SMEs, the orientation towards CSR begins with the entrepreneur and his/her family and is a manifestation of both the values tied to the entrepreneur’s personal beliefs as well as those tied to cultural and social variables in the territory to which they belong. This proposition, which represents the first result of this exploratory study, could orient future research to the analysis of multiple case-studies in order to develop new theories and generate hypotheses which must be verified through a quantitative-based study in a further stage of the study.