Family firms and practices of sustainability: A contingency view

There has been growing discussion regarding the potential of family firms to embrace practices of corporate sustainability – the tendency to behave in economically, socially, and environmentally responsible ways in a manner that benefits all stakeholders and the community at large. Different conceptual lenses can be used to stress family firm positives and negatives in this regard. We identify those lenses and summarize the sustainability implications that can be extracted from them. Then we propose a set of moderating factors that may serve to arbitrate under just which conditions family firms are most apt to pursue positive practices of sustainability.