Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), in collaboration with Arizona State University (ASU) and Universidad de Salamanca, has carried out scientific research that indicates that family businesses show more environmentally responsible behaviour than non-family businesses.
In this context, a family business is considered to be a company in which the person who founded it or acquired its share capital owns at least 25% of the voting rights, whether he/she, his/her relatives or his/her descendants.
The study, recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics , found that the predisposition of family businesses to promote green policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions is even greater when family members are involved in the governance system of the corporation through their participation in the Board of Directors.
“We have also seen that when the founding generation continues at the helm of the company, the efforts of family businesses to be more environmentally sustainable are even more accentuated,” says one of the researchers, María José Sánchez Bueno, a professor in the UC3M Department of Business Economics.
The study, in which 22 European countries are represented (making the results generalisable to Europe as a whole), also found that family businesses that undertake these types of practices aimed at promoting sustainability from an environmental point of view also perform better financially.
“It may be surprising, but our study shows that the reduction of pollution, far from entailing a cost to society or an 'economic price' for companies, can improve both the social and financial benefits derived from actions linked to corporate social responsibility,” concludes María José Sánchez Bueno.
The results of this study could have important societal implications since the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is now essential to ensure the long-term protection of the planet, according to the researchers.
To carry out the study, the researchers used emissions data (from family and non-family businesses) published by the European Emissions Trading System, which is a cornerstone of the European Union's climate change policy, and from Amadeus, a database that provides information on the type of ownership and financial indicators of companies.
Bibliographic reference: Gómez-Mejía, L.R., Muñoz-Bullón, F., Requejo, I. Sanchez-Bueno, M. J. (2025). Ethical Correlates of Family Control: Socioemotional Wealth, Environmental Performance, and Financial Returns. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-025-05943-9 .
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Journal of Business Ethics