Family firms’ growth and sustainability. A case study from the Italian food industry.

The purpose of this work is to analyze the conditions that allow family firms, which are often portrayed as conservative and reluctant to invest in innovation (Duran et al., 2016), to take a leadership role in sustainable developments. We choose this topic because around the world, the concerns about resource over-consumption, environmental degradation and social inequity, have resulted in calls for a transition toward a more sustainable society and economy, that involve all the economic agents (Adams et al., 2016). This is because they are recognized as part of the problem as well as of the solution, being positioned to effect positive changes in the direction of sustainability (Adams et al., 2016). In this context, since roughly more than two thirds of all the firms across the globe, can be considered family-owned businesses (Duran et al., 2016), an understanding of their particular behavior toward the three pillars of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) is pressing. The peculiarity of their conduct, derives from the fact that while they are perceived to be good employers and committed to social and environmental responsibility, thanks to the family’s influence (Zellweger, 2017), they tend to take distances from radical changes (Duran et al., 2016), losing in this way the opportunity to lead the path toward sustainable developments as, among the necessary means for achieving a sustainable economic growth, innovation and flexibility are crucial (Adams et al., 2016). For these reasons, to give an answer to the research question “How can a family firm grow, following a sustainability path?” we choose to use a qualitative analysis on two family firms, operating in one of the most challenging industries in term of sustainability-related issues: the food industry. Indeed, the selected family businesses are Rigoni di Asiago S.r.l, and Beehoney&co (a pseudonym for the company name) , two companies operating in the Italian food industry. The first case study, based on the analysis of Rigoni di Asiago, has been carried out through the use of secondary sources of data, focused on the topics highlighted by the theoretical framework of the thesis. The conclusions obtained from the analysis of the Rigoni di Asiago case study, meaning the initial answer to the research question, have been integrated with a second case study, based on Beehoney&co, a small family firm located in Padua and similar to Rigoni in terms of origins, business and family’s values. The second case has been conducted through a semi-structured interview with the founders of the company, Margherita and Andrea Beehoney , that are still working for their business having a dominant influence in company’s decisions, even if the firm has been passed on to their second daughter, part of the second generation of the family. As stated above, the analysis of Beehoney&co, has been carried out to test the conclusions obtained from the first case study and the selection of such a type of firm, has been driven by the desire of finding a company in which the link between the family and the company’s actions was not influenced by nonfamily members or other external pressures, typical of larger firms. So, the findings obtained from the Rigoni di Asiago case, combined with the insights revealed by the Beehoney&co analysis, have been useful to integrate the theoretical framework of the thesis, drawing a more complete answer to the research question.