Generational Variation in the Antecedents of Environmental and Social Sustainability in Family Firms

Abstract

Our understanding of the effect of the generational variation on the antecedents of the non-economic strategy of family firms is limited. We bridge this gap by establishing the effects of the generational difference of family firms on the factors affecting implementation of their corporate environmental and social sustainability strategy. Within stewardship theory and organizational life cycle framework, we assert that the importance of the antecedents of the strategies change from first- to second- to third-generation family firms. We developed a proprietary data set of 163 publicly listed Indian firms from a questionnaire survey and secondary sources to support our hypotheses.