The paradox of sustainable development : a conceptual framework for sustainability-driven family entrepreneurship from socio-emotional wealth perspective

Abstract

Sustainability-driven Entrepreneurship (SE) has recently received considerable attention in entrepreneurship and sustainability literature in mainstream journals. It is topical in the literature because scholars believe that SE practices can reverse market imperfections created by conventional entrepreneurial practices into sustainable opportunity to drive the world into the next industrial revolution. While much has been written about this, how it relates to family-owned businesses has not been extensively studied. Even though family business scholars have studied the incremental aspect of the concept but on a more radical perspective, there is a gap in the literature. This study has been conducted from a critical realist perspective to fill this gap on how the concept relates to family business. Family business was defined as business governed and/or managed by a dominant coalition controlled by members of the same with the intention to shape and pursue the vision of the business in a manner that is potentially sustainable across generations of the family or families. Methodologically, the study used the descriptive method of the Interpretative Study of Concepts. In this study, 303 articles were assessed. After rigorous vetting the articles were refined to 200 for analysis. The dialectical process of intuition and reflective thinking, informed by the chosen methodology, were used to analyse the data. The study examined sustainability and entrepreneurship concepts in family business literature to uncover how those concepts relate to the concepts of SE in family business context. Results clearly showed that, none of the existing concepts found in this study is synonymous with SE in family business context, not even the dominant Trans-generational Entrepreneurship concept. This gap in the family business literature provided avenue for new concept to emerge. To fill this gap, this study developed a new framework with Socio-emotional wealth theory as its main underlying theory. This is how the study proposed that Sustainability Entrepreneurship relates to family business. Within this, the study discovered that the hullabaloo of the fight against saving the planet is between people, planet and profit. In family business, it is a tug-of-war between people, planet, profit and emotion. These findings have implications for theory and practice