Does family matter? Ownership, motives and firms’ environmental strategy
研究家族所有权如何通过家族成员对合法性和社会情感财富的追求，推动企业获得ISO 14001认证，并发现企业名称含家族姓氏或靠近大城市时效应更强。
Extant research has primarily focused on the economic drivers and outcomes of corporate environmental performance. This trajectory oversimplifies the motives for environmental strategies across all firm types and particularly overlooks how firm ownership presents other motives for environmental strategies. In this study, we leverage institutional theory to examine how family motives, underpinned by family members' desire to gain or preserve family legitimacy and socio-emotional wealth, affect ISO 14001 certification. Using firm-level data, we find that family ownership has a positive effect on ISO 14001 certification. This effect is stronger for firms whose names include the family name and also for firms located closer to large cities. Our study contributes to nonmarket strategy literature by showing that family motives underpin firms’ environmental initiatives. It also contributes to institutional theory by delineating the levels of legitimacy that spur nonmarket strategy in family firms.