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

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the integration of new forms of sustainablecontrol systems (SCSs) and traditional management control systems (MCSs), and the use of thesecontrol systems affect the integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. A qualitativecase study based on a longitudinal investigation of an Italian family firm operating in anenvironment-sensitive context, the intermodal transport industry, has been used to trace thecompany’s pathway to sustainability integration based on the Gond et al. framework. The paperenriches the Gond et al. conceptualization providing evidence of the external and internal factorsrelevant in affecting the organization’s pathway towards sustainability integration. To the best ofthe authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first analysis that investigates the integration ofsustainability into organizational strategy in the context of family firms, from the point of view ofperformance management systems (PMSs).