Next generation impact on family business sustainability: CSR, family-centred goals and founder values

Despite extensive studies on family business sustainability, there have been limited empirical studies on the involvement and commitment of the next generation towards family business sustainability. This study seeks to fill this gap by unpacking the role of the next generation in family business sustainability, exploring the micro foundations through which they can shape and influence the family businesses, through CSR involvement, family-centred goals, and founders’ values.  This study adopts a qualitative, multiple case-study design. It selected ten family firms from six industries, with different levels of next generation involvement. Following a pilot study, two rounds of data collection were carried out between 2019 and 2020, constituting 23 participants in 31 interviews which generated 2,105 minutes of data. The participants included three first generation founders, 19 second/third generation directors, and 1 non-family director. 

 This thesis consists of three papers. The first study draws on the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) theory, investigating the involvement of the next generation in CSR activities and how this involvement affects next-generation towards sustainability in family business. The second paper examines the role of the next generations in shaping family-centred goals, explaining how and why they influence family-centred financial and nonfinancial goals towards building sustainable family business. The third study analyses how founder values and personalities, as key family resources, influence the commitment of the next generations towards family business sustainability. Taken together, the findings provide theoretical insights into the influence of the next generation in building sustainable family businesses. By developing three novel next-generation-oriented theorical models, the studies contribute to the SEW theory, Sustainable Family Business Theory (SFBT) and the literature on family business goals.