The Influence of a Family Business Climate and CEO–CFO Relationship Quality on Misreporting Conduct

This study answers Vazquez’s (J Bus Ethics 150(3):691–709, 2016 ) call for more research focused on the intersection between family firms and business ethics. We investigate two contextual factors potentially affecting the ethical reporting of chief financial officers (CFOs): a firm’s social ties to the controlling family and the CFOs’ perceived relationship quality with the CEO. We test our hypotheses by examining the financial reporting behavior of Chinese CFOs who work at (1) family or nonfamily businesses and in (2) private or public firms. Results of this study advance our understanding of social and contextual factors that may compromise CFOs' reporting behavior in family firms (Suh et al., J Bus Ethics, 2018 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3982-3 ). This research also suggests that failure to distinguish between public and private companies may bias the results of studies that examine family firms.