Non-financial information reporting of Polish family and non-family companies. A comparative analysis

Abstract

Purpose: According to the principles of the Socioemotional Wealth concept, family firms are particularly attentive to the non-financial aspects of their businesses, as this dimension is closely identified with the owners’ families and their reputation. This research aims to identify the approaches maintained by Polish family firms towards their non-financial information reporting in comparison with their non-family counter-parts and examine the quality of the information presented. Methodology/approach: For the theoretical part, the source literature analysis meth-od and the descriptive analysis method were used. The selection of the sample compa-nies was made using a matched-pair analysis. To assess the quality of the ESG disclo-sures, content analysis and the research design developed by Hąbek and Wolniak (2016) were applied. Findings: Our empirical study supports the initial assumption that family firms’ ESG disclosures are better quality than their non-family counterparts. This applies to both the relevance and credibility of information. The availability of non-financial infor-mation to external stakeholders has been rated low for both family and non-family busi-nesses. Research limitations/implications: The study is limited to one country; hence the suggestion that similar research be conducted in other countries in the CEE region. This will make it possible to assess whether, in economies that have undergone a pro-cess of transformation and where family entrepreneurship has a much shorter history than in developed countries, family businesses also undertake and promote CSR activi-ties to a greater extent than non-family firms. The study only focused on listed compa-nies; to strengthen the findings, further research would need to include entities from the SME sector, which dominates most economies. Originality/value: Quality assessment of non-financial reporting is a rarely addressed topic in the literature on non-financial reporting and family businesses. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the Polish market.