Patient Capital
The Role of Family Firms in Sustainable Business

Exploration of environmental sustainability using the family business lens for fresh insights on balancing short-term financial performance with long-term corporate sustainability strategies.

Sanjay Sharma (Author), Pramodita Sharma (Author)

9781107123663, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 July 2019

256 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.6 cm, 0.53 kg

'This is a must read for anyone interested in sustainability management. Sanjay Sharma and Dita Sharma's book provides a very intriguing seminal contribution that helps to understand how family firms, from industrialized and developing countries, approach environmental sustainability. Family businesses represent the vast majority of firms around the globe both in terms of employees and economic output. Yet, most sustainability management research has ignored these firms, focusing instead on publicly traded companies from industrialized countries. Relying on rigorous in-depth case studies, this book proposes a comprehensive interdisciplinary framework identifying different drivers of greener business strategies. Their framework also shows that, given their greater longer-term orientation and values, family firms have a higher tendency to be greener than public firms. Overall, this is captivating book that will be of great interest to sustainability management scholars.' Jorge E. Rivera, George Washington University, Washington DC

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.

Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship [KJH], Business ethics & social responsibility [KJG], Business innovation [KJD], Business & management: study & revision guides [KJBX], Business studies: general [KJB]