Sustainability Strategy and Management Control Systems in Family Firms. Evidence from a Case Study

Fabio Caputo, Stefania Veltri and Andrea Venturelli
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Fabio Caputo: Department of Management, Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Salento, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Stefania Veltri: Department of Business Administration and Law, University of Calabria, Ponte P. Bucci, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende (CS), Italy
Andrea Venturelli: Department of Management, Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Salento, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 6, 1-23

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate how the integration of new forms of sustainable control systems (SCSs) and traditional management control systems (MCSs), and the use of these control systems affect the integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. A qualitative case study based on a longitudinal investigation of an Italian family firm operating in an environment-sensitive context, the intermodal transport industry, has been used to trace the company’s pathway to sustainability integration based on the Gond et al. framework. The paper enriches the Gond et al. conceptualization providing evidence of the external and internal factors relevant in affecting the organization’s pathway towards sustainability integration. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first analysis that investigates the integration of sustainability into organizational strategy in the context of family firms, from the point of view of performance management systems (PMSs).

Keywords: management control systems (MCSs); sustainability control systems (SCSs); performance management systems (PMSs); sustainability integration; Family firm; case study; Italian territory; intermodal transport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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