Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability has become a key issue to develop modern business models and ensure continuous and viable relationships between firms and their environment, in order to create value, as well as to maintain success over time. The theoretical frameworks such as Economy for the Common Good; CSR or Sustainable Regional Development; transnational commitments such as Sustainable Development Goals—SDG; or practices such as non-financial reporting have become part of the ongoing debate among both management practitioners and academics.

Today, research focuses mainly on supranational organizations, government entities, institutions and large companies; however, there are fewer studies addressing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, research on other types of organizations, such as family business, has been scarce with only a few exceptions [1–4].

Consistent with the dominance of family businesses in the economic landscape around the world—two-thirds of all businesses around the world generate around 70–90% of annual global GDP and create 50–80% of employment (Family Firm Institute, 2017). Accordingly, it is important to gain specific knowledge about the ‘family business sustainability posture’—FBSP ¹. That is the specific and differentiated strategic focus of the family business toward sustainability, depending on how the owner family understands the breadth and scope of its responsibility towards sustainability, their willingness to commit to such issues, as well as their ability to contribute ².

Given that this issue is in its infancy, a wide range of research focus, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies are welcome. Some, though not all, of the potential topics of interest are:

• The relationship between the models of owner family and the FBSP;
• Different approaches to sustainability related decisions and practices depending on family business economic and context;
• Sustainability across generations: How different family generations perceive sustainability and related responsibility;
• The interactions among family performance dimensions, business performance dimensions, and the adoption of sustainability practices, including non-financial reporting;
• With regard to methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative methods are welcome, such as the types and configurations such as fQCA, LPA, cluster analysis, and any other method conducive to better understanding family business as a complex system.

The goal of this special issue is to unleash a fruitful dialogue among researchers around the world with different perspectives and approaches, by using different methodologies, and developing an enriching collaboration among the authors, reviewers, and editors, in order to produce relevant papers for both the academic and practitioner communities.

Hence, the focus of this Special Issue is on the issues related with how the family business face the sustainability challenges: their specific mindsets, intentions, role assignments, internal as well external interactions, and their preferred sustainability practices.

¹ Family Business Sustainability Posture. Authors consider that this can be a fruitful translation of the ‘family firm innovation posture’ recently proposed by Rondi, De Massis and Kotlar [5]

² The willingness-ability paradox, proposed by Chrisman et al [6] to analyze the specific way family business innovate, also can be a promising approach to analyze the specific way the owner family faces questions related to sustainability. Is there such paradox? Maybe in a different way? Is owner-family prone to develop sustainability? Do the families and their businesses have the ability to do so?

Reference

1. Bakoğlu, R.; Yıldırım, O.B.A. The Role of Sustainability in Long Term Survival of Family Business: Henokiens Revisited. Procedia - Soc. Behav. Sci. 2016, 235, 788–796.
2. Le Breton-Miller, I.; Miller, D. Family firms and practices of sustainability: A contingency view. Fam. Bus. Strat. 2016, 7, 26–33.
3. López-Pérez, M.E.; Melero-Polo, I.; Vázquez-Carrasco, R.; Cambra-Fierro, J.J. Sustainability and Business Outcomes in the Context of SMEs: Comparing Family Firms vs. Non-Family Firms. 2018, 10, 4080.
4. Memili, E.; Fang, H. “Chevy”; Koç, B.; Yildirim-Öktem, Özlem; Sonmez, S. Sustainability practices of family firms: the interplay between family ownership and long-term orientation. Sustain. Tour. 2017, 26, 9–28.
5. Rondi, E.; De Massis, A.; Kotlar, J. Unlocking innovation potential: A typology of family business innovation postures and the critical role of the family system. Fam. Bus. Strat. 2019, 10, 100236.
6. Chrisman, J.J.; Chua, J.H.; De Massis, A.; Frattini, F.; Wright, M.; Chua, J.H. The Ability and Willingness Paradox in Family Firm Innovation. Prod. Innov. Manag. 2014, 32, 310–318.

Dr. Tomas Gonzalez Cruz
Guest Editor

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• Family business sustainability posture
• Family business sustainability practices
• Owner family–family business fit
• Family business ‘willingness-ability paradox’
• Family business non-financial reporting
• Family business sustainable workplace practices
• Family business community engagement
• Family business stakeholder engagement
• Family business and regional development
• Family business and corporate social responsibility
• Family business behavior under critical situations: environmental, human, and economic crises