Sustainabilty in Family Businesses

How have family businesses responded to the call for sustainable practices? Authors Magali A. Delmas and Olivier Gergaud recently tested their hypothesis that family businesses tend to emphasize a more socially responsible attitude for themselves and their kin by studying family owned and operated wineries in California in their article “Sustainable Certification for Future Generations: The Case of Family Business” from Family Business Review.

The abstract:

Business sustainability has been defined as meeting current needs while providing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. However, few firms invest in practices geared at sustainability. In this article, we investigate how family ties to future generations via the intention of transgenerational succession can be associated with the adoption of sustainable practices. Using data from 281 wineries in the United States collected through a survey questionnaire, we show that ties to future generations, measured as the intention of the winery owner to pass down the winery to their children, are associated with the adoption of sustainable certification.

Click here to read “Sustainable Certification for Future Generations: The Case of Family Business” from Family Business Review. Don’t want to miss out on research like this? Click here to sign up for e-alerts from Family Business Review!