Patient Capital The Role of Family Firms in Sustainable Business

Sustainable businesses create economic and social value while simultaneously protecting the natural environment for future generations. This examination of environmental sustainability through the lens of the family business identifies factors that help family and non-family organizations address the dilemma of balancing short-term productivity, efficiency and profitability objectives, with innovating for long-term sustainable value creation. Exploring the case of the wine industry - an industry characterized by a variety of governance systems - Sanjay and Pramodita Sharma develop fresh insights into influences and drivers for proactive environmental strategies to address major global sustainability challenges. By doing so, the authors are able to demonstrate that family firms with a focus on trans-generational continuity of business, long temporal orientation, shared vision, faster decision-making processes, and the goal of preserving socio-emotional wealth are more likely to make patient long-term investments for innovations in products, services, processes and business models to address environmental sustainability challenges.

1. Definitions; 2. Primary data: cases from the winery industry in Canada, France and Chile; 3. Exogenous drivers of corporate environmental strategy; 4. Organizational drivers of corporate environmental sustainability strategy; 5. Managerial drivers of environmental sustainability strategy; 6. Bringing the family into the corporate environmental sustainability strategy: implications for research, education and policy.

Sanjay Sharma is the Dean of the Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont. His previous published books include: Competing for a Sustainable World: Building Capacity for Sustainable Innovation (2014); Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2008); Corporate Environmental Strategy and Competitive Advantage (2005), and Research in Corporate Sustainability: The Evolving Theory and Practice of Organizations in the Natural Environment (2002) as well as numerous articles and book chapters.
Pramodita Sharma is a Professor and Daniel Clark Sanders Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Business at the Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont. Her previously published work includes: as co-author, Entrepreneurs in Every Generation: How Successful Family Businesses Develop Their Next Leaders (2016), The SAGE Handbook of Family Business (2013), Family Business Studies: Review and Annotated Bibliography (1996, 2012) as well as numerous articles and book chapters.