Abstract
The paper extends the current debate of whether family firms are supportive of environmental initiatives. It focuses on the micro-foundations of the family firm by looking at its ethical stance and long-term orientation and examines their impacts on environmental practices, which influence the environmental and financial performance of family firms. First, we seek to investigate the extent of willingness to do good derives from i) ‘the right way to do things’ (normative motivation) and ii) ‘the way we want to do things’ in a family firm (long-term orientation) translate into doing good. Second, we also intend to examine to what extent these relationships are moderated by the family’s influence and control. The desire to maintain family control and influence has been found to favour nepotism and cronyism in business operations thus failing to attract new talent and skill, and (Kellermanns, Eddleston, & Zellweger, 2012). It affects the abilities of family firms to implement environmental practices which may require expertise and knowledge of environmental impacts. Third, we investigate how environmental practices, in turn, impact the firm’s financial performance, particularly answering the question of does doing good translates to doing well. To answer the research questions, we will be collecting data from at least 170 Turkish family firms. Turkish family firms have a blended culture of East and West offers a unique context to examine the interactions between normative motivation, long-term orientation and family’s influence and control.