French family business and longevity: Have they been conducting sustainable development policies before it became a fashion?

This paper weaves together two strands of literature: one on sustainable development (SD) and one on family business (FB), with a focus on the longevity of FB. We investigate the SD literature and then review the FB one on longevity, in light of the key questions related to SD. Using 27 h of fully transcribed interviews, with 17 different FB owners or family members, from six long-standing French FBs, we set out to identify what factors family members associate with the longevity of their company. We check with what consistency these factors relate to the FB and SD literature.