We investigate the relationship between family-related factors in family owned businesses and the level of business legality, which is a key dimension of corporate social responsibility, surprisingly neglected despite its business and social relevance. By adopting the ability and willingness perspective, and merging it with signaling theory, we consider family involvement in management and generational stage as key antecedents of legal behavior in family owned businesses. We utilize an official legality rating recently developed by the Italian Competition Authority to build a unique dataset of 161 Italian family owned SMEs. Results from a regression analysis confirm our hypotheses: business legality increases with higher levels of family involvement in management, and at later generational stages.

我们调查了家族企业中与家庭有关的因素与商业合法性水平之间的关系，商业合法性是企业社会责任的一个关键维度，尽管它与商业和社会相关，却被意外地忽略了。通过采用能力和意愿的观点，并将其与信号理论相结合，我们将家族参与管理和世代阶段视为家族企业合法行为的关键先决条件。我们利用意大利竞争管理局最近制定的官方合法性评级，建立了由161家意大利家族企业组成的独特数据集。回归分析的结果证实了我们的假设：随着家族在管理中的参与程度越高以及在后代阶段，业务合法性就越高。