Prelims

Half Title Page

Attaining the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of Quality Education

Series Title Page

Family Businesses on a Mission

Series Editors:

Naomi Birdthistle Rob Hales

The Family Businesses on Mission series examines how the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) can be applied in family businesses around the world, providing insights into cultural and societal differences and displaying innovative approaches to complex environmental and societal issues.

Title Page

Attaining the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of Quality Education

Edited By

Naomi Birdthistle

Griffith University, Australia

And

Rob Hales

Griffith University, Australia

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Editorial matter and selection © 2022 Naomi Birdthistle and Rob Hales.

Individual chapters © 2022 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80382-478-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80382-475-8 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80382-477-2 (Epub)

List of Figures

List of Tables

About the Editors

Associate Professor Naomi Birdthistle has entrepreneurship in her blood. She worked in her family business for over 20 years, which is the largest indoor funfair in Europe. On leaving the family business she ran her own consulting business, where she consulted family businesses on management issues. Naomi's passion for family business management and entrepreneurship is evident by her research outputs. She wrote the first ever PhD on family businesses in Ireland which won the Family Firm Institute's ‘Best Doctoral Dissertation Award’. She has published 32 peer-reviewed papers, three books, 18 book chapters, 63 conference papers and an abundance of national and European reports. Naomi's research covers many areas within the entrepreneurship and family business discipline including the following: entrepreneurship education, minority groups and entrepreneurship; women owned and led businesses; succession planning in family businesses; divorce and family business and the role women play in family businesses. Naomi supervises PhDs around women entrepreneurship, family business management issues and high-growth firms.

Dr Rob Hales is the Director of the Griffith Centre for Sustainable Enterprise in the Griffith Business School at Griffith University. The Centre oversees the sustainability strategy and initiatives of the Griffith Business School. He is the co-chair of the Griffith University's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Working Group which oversees the SDG Strategy and Times Higher Education Impact ranking processes of the university. His research interests focus on the governance issues around the grand challenges of our time. His research focusses on SDGs in business and government, a business case for climate change, climate change policy, carbon management, sustainable tourism and working with First Peoples on consent processes and climate change. He created and was the first program director of Griffith University's Master of Global Development. He teaches in the Department of Business Strategy and Innovation and has convened master’s level courses such as Leadership for Sustainable Business, Research Methods for Policy Makers and Sustainability and Systems Thinking. He supervises PhD students in the areas of collaborative governance, sustainability transitions and climate change.

About the Contributors

Dr Sofiane Baba is Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada. His research focuses on the organization–society nexus from a variety of theoretical perspectives and research interests, mainly related to institutional change, sustainability and strategic management. His work has received best paper awards and is published in leading peer-reviewed journals. He holds a Master of Science in Strategy and a PhD in Organizational Theory and Strategy from HEC Montreal.

Mr Samuel Bradley is the Sustainable Development and Corporate Projects Manager at Emballage St-Jean Ltee. He has also worked as a research assistant at the Université de Sherbrooke and an environmental specialist at Pratt & Whitney Canada. He holds a Master's Degree in Environmental Management from the Université de Sherbrooke and a graduate diploma in sustainable development from HEC Montréal.

Dr Kelli Fuery is Associate Professor in Film at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Chapman University, California. She previously held posts at Birkbeck College, University of London in visual culture and screen studies, and Monash University in new media studies. She is the author of five books; her latest book, Ambiguous Cinema: From Simone de Beauvoir to Feminist Film Phenomenology, will be published in 2022 with Edinburgh University Press.

Dr Patrick Fuery is Professor and Director of the Center for Creative and Cultural Industries, Chapman University, California. He was previously Professor of Film and Cultural Studies, Sussex University and Reader in film, Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of eight books on cultural theory, visual cultural studies, phenomenology and psychoanalysis. His ninth book, on intimacy and anxiety, will be published in 2022.

Prof Bernd Kirschner, Dipl.-Kfm., currently is Head of Department & Studies, Director of Business & Management (BA) and International Business & Management (MA) programmes, as well as Head of the Management Accounting & Control Program (ExEd) at MCI |The Entrepreneurial School^®. He graduated from the Friedrich–Alexander University Erlangen–Nuremberg, Germany, with a diploma in 1994. Apart from academia he worked as Banker for Dresdner Bank AG in Stuttgart, Germany, and Toronto, Canada. After his studies in Business Administration, he continued his career as a Management Accountant and Financial Controller at Jungheinrich AG in Hamburg, Germany, and Paris, France. Before joining the MCI in 2002 he gained experience as Business Consultant and Proxy Holder at Horváth & Partner GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany. His research and teaching interests include entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial finance and financial management.

Dr Tafadzwa Leroy Machirori is an experienced researcher and lecturer whose interests lie in the field of entrepreneurship, in general, and more specifically, immigrant entrepreneurship, where he investigated for his doctoral thesis the experiences of immigrant entrepreneurs in high-tech sectors. More recently, he has begun delving into family business research and teaching. Previously, he has collaborated in several multi-disciplinary projects, including the evaluation of the status of teaching in Australia, university–SME collaboration in Australia, among others. In other research, he has also contributed to projects investigating substance abuse among young Victorians, sustainable youth livelihood initiatives and paths to alleviate youth poverty in Zimbabwe.

Mr Simon Meinschad is the CEO of hollu Systemhygiene GmbH, a Tyrolean-based company producing and distributing cleaning agents and supplies. Since 2018 hollu Systemhygiene has adopted the 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) into their daily business. Before becoming CEO of the company in 2012, Simon Meinschad worked at hollu Systemhygiene in controlling, sales, as well as other departments. Since 2019 he also functions as a board member and country coordinator (Tyrol) for respACT – the Austrian Business Council for Sustainable Development. In 2017 he held lectures at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), teaching Sales and Distribution Management. From 1994 to 2000 he worked for Hoepperger GmbH & Co. KG as an accountant. His career started with an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk at Liebherr-Werk Telfs GmbH.

Ms Amina I. Wazoumi is a doctoral candidate at the business school of the Université de Sherbrooke. Her research topic focuses on strategic change in philanthropic organisations in Québec, which regularly face challenges related to the constantly changing environment. Amina holds several university degrees in law, finance, accounting and administration obtained in Africa and France. She has been working at the Ministry of Finance and Budget of Chad since July 2006. She has held several positions of responsibility, including head of the department in charge of accounting, head of the IT project management unit, head of the division of studies and financial and accounting regulations, head of the inspection of Treasury services and director of the authorisation of operating and investment expenses at the Ministry of Finance and Budget of Chad.

Dr Anita Zehrer currently is Professor, Head of the Family Business Center as well as Head of Research (Management & Society) at MCI |The Entrepreneurial School^®. She graduated from Innsbruck University with a PhD in Social Sciences and became full professor in 2015 (Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt). From 2007 to 2015 she was Deputy Head of the MCI Tourism Department, from 2012 to 2017 she was Deputy Head of the Academic Council, from 2016 to 2019 she was Adjunct Professor at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia (2012–2016), and the University of Canberra, Australia (2013–2016). From 2009 to 2018 she served as Vice-President of the German Association for Tourism Research DGT, from 2014 to 2017 she was Member of the Tourism Advisory Board of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Energy, Germany, and from 2016 to 2017 she was tourism expert at the Committee of Regions at the European Union. Her research interests are diverse and include entrepreneurship and family business management. She has broad competence in interdisciplinary research in tourism and business.

Foreword

Professor Walter Leal Filho

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 provide a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. They also entail elements of importance towards a strategic business engagement with sustainability issues. These offer a framework which provides businesses with a systematic approach to identify new business opportunities while contributing to the solution of the grand sustainability challenges facing the world today, including climate change. Each SDG, if achieved, will have a direct and significant positive impact on millions of people's lives around the world and the environment in which they live.

Businesses have an opportunity to widen the purpose of business through adopting the SDGs as targets for their operations. Thus, they can make a meaningful contribution to the greater good through achieving their operational objectives.

Family businesses are uniquely placed to contribute to SDGs for many reasons. First, because family business models have longer time perspectives, and this allows the family business to link with the longer-term SDG time frame – 2030. Second, family businesses often focus on aspects of business operation which do not have an immediate return on investment such as relationship building with stakeholder groups. Third, family businesses tend to rate the importance of ethics higher than standard businesses and thus align well with the social dimensions of the SDGs. Lastly, family businesses have intergenerational perspectives which is a core principle of sustainability.

This book provides insights into how family business operationalises SDG#4: Quality Education. The book uses a rigorous case study approach for family businesses to detail aspects of their business which help to advance quality education. The cases provided here are living proof that family businesses that operate for the greater good actually work! Non-family businesses can take a leaf out of the family businesses portrayed in this book as they can provide different perspectives on how businesses can successfully align SDGs and business strategy.

Despite many businesses having adopted environmental social governance strategies and environmental management systems, the effect of this activity has not been reflected in a healthier planet. Many ‘state of the environment’ reports indicate that planetary health is decreasing and planetary boundaries are being crossed or are about to be crossed. Whilst the cause of this decline is not entirely the fault of a business, there still needs to be a greater effort to address the decline. The challenge for family businesses is to use their unique characteristics and set ambitious programmes of work that make a meaningful contribution to achieving global goals. This book provides insights into how family businesses can achieve such a mission and how non-family businesses can be inspired to do the same.

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank the contributors of the book for providing insights and sharing the learnings from their business practice. We acknowledge that writing up cases in the format required considerable time and effort. The quality of the cases presented is a testament to their efforts.

The editors would also like to thank Emerald Publishing for supporting the publication of this book and the mission for deeper sustainability through utilising the SDGs.