Sustainability and Environmental Behaviour in Family Firms: A Longitudinal Analysis of Environment-Related Activities, Innovation and Performance

Environmental behaviour plays an important role as concerns the public image and performance of firms, as well as for the achievement of sustainable development in society. This study investigates the behaviour of family firms regarding environment-related activities, innovation and performance. Opposing goals are found to impact environmental behaviour of family firms, in particular the trade-off between family firms' risk awareness and their aim of achieving socioeconomic wealth. We find that family firms initially lag regarding environment-related activities, beneficial product, process and organizational innovations and performance. Yet, family firms catch up and show overall less volatility compared with other firms. Overall, we thus observe a convergence process between family and non-family firms, which ultimately enables the two types of firm to achieve similar outcomes in terms of environment-related activities, beneficial innovations and performance. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment