Family firm entrepreneurship and sustainability initiatives: Women as corporate change agents

Abstract

Family businesses are often seen as key players in efforts to increase sustainability due to their transgenerational focus. Researchers have reported that companies strengthen their commitment to sustainability as they consolidate their entrepreneurial commitment, but the existing knowledge about drivers of family firms' sustainability choices is limited. This study sought to fill related research gaps by exploring the relationships between five entrepreneurial orientation (EO) components—risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy—and family businesses' sustainability initiatives. These companies comprise a unique research context in terms of the EO‐sustainability link due to their focus on continuity and propensity to create value for future generations. In addition, women increasingly hold leadership positions within family businesses, and studies have categorised both entrepreneurship and sustainability as gendered processes. Thus, this research also explored female chief executive officers' (CEOs) moderating role as corporate change agents who influence the EO‐sustainability initiatives relationship. Analyses were conducted using primary data collected from 195 privately held family firms in Poland. The results indicate that only one EO component (innovativeness) is significantly associated with family businesses' sustainability initiatives and that CEO gender moderates the links between two EO components (proactiveness and autonomy) and sustainability. Thus, this article contributes to the management literature by exploring the role of women leaders as change agents for sustainability in family firms. Other significant theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Leadership in special contexts: Introduction to the special issue

“…On the other hand, in the study titled "Women ownership as a form of leadership: The role of context in understanding its effects on financial performance," Orozco Collazos and Botero (2024) choose as study context Colombia, a country whose society is highly masculine and where there exits not laws or incentives that promote gender equality in the private sector (Orozco Collazos & Baldrich, 2020;Orozco Collazos & Botero, 2024). Specifically, Orozco Collazos and Botero ( 2024) analyze the relationship between women ownership and financial performance of Colombian private small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) and the moderating role of a context as unique as the family firm (Berrone et al, 2012;Domańska et al, 2023;Hernández-Linares et al, 2023;Hernández-Linares & López-Fernández, 2020) in this relationship. Authors explore these relationships by using multiple regression analysis with data retrieved from secondary databases.…”

Consultants as discreet corporate change agents for sustainability: Transforming organizations from the outside‐in

“…Although organization and management scholars have shifted their attention away from the institutional and the organizational drivers of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability to explore the individual micro‐foundations underlying the corporate move toward sustainability (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012; Gond et al., 2017; Gond & Moser, 2021), not all “change agents for sustainability” (hereafter CAS) have received similar levels of scrutiny (Schaltegger et al., 2023). While the various contributions of this special issue have started bringing to the fore some under‐researched agents (Girschik et al., 2022), such as women chief executive officers (CEOs) of family firms (Dománska et al., 2023) or social intrapreneurs (Hahn et al., 2023), the bulk of research about CAS remains focused on employees and, in particular, corporate social responsibility or sustainability professionals occupying various formal positions (e.g., Augustine, 2021; Gond et al., 2018; Lespinasse‐Camargo et al., 2023; Thomsen et al., 2023). As Schaltegger et al.…”