1. Introduction
A long history of legitimate concerns regarding the state and the sustainability of tropical forests has led global fora and governments to establish regulations, platforms and frameworks targeted towards helping tropical countries achieve sustainable management of their forests. Concomitantly, and at a much faster pace, private and civil society initiatives developed a large array of actions and tools. Most of them aimed to mobilize public opinion, which in the last two decades have been characterized by several spectacular activist events such as boycotts or targeted campaigns, often organized by non-governmental organizations. The same period also witnessed the unprecedented progression of private market regulation tools such as ecolabels and environmental certification schemes. All of these tools emerged from the dominant paradigm that buyers’ preferences ultimately condition the behavior of companies. It does so theoretically by sanctioning unsustainable behaviors, or securing market premiums to “greener” and “fairer” products. Nevertheless, after years of implementation, the original intention to save tropical forests has largely failed [
1,
2]. Weak consumer demand in global, emerging markets and fragile public governance frameworks in many developing countries, and the fundamental role of corporate powers are mentioned as the main reasons for this failure [
3,
4].
Southeast Asia exemplifies how globalization has changed the patterns of forestry, value-chains and trade, from the 1960s to the present. Initially, timber trade and various agricultural crops were considered as independent value-chains. Their interconnections are now better known. Since the last two decades, it has become common to link deforestation with globalization, transnational corporations [
5] and the development of cash crops [
6,
7]. Among the rapid changes witnessed by Southeast Asia, is the development of agribusiness transnational corporations such as Olam, Wilmar and Sinar Mas, which started as Asian conglomerates but now play in the same global field with the giants of the sector known as the ABCD traders (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus) [
8]. Other lesser-known Asian corporations such as Sime Darby, Ta Ann, WTK, Samling,
etc., occasionally appear in the news when some non-governmental organizations publish reports about their environmental misdeeds, real or alleged, or investors such as the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) announce decisions to divest [
9,
10]. These new transnational corporations operate in every continent and in all sectors, including forestry and timber trade. They connect Asian issues to the rest of the world, especially to Africa, through their global presence. These controversial issues include deforestation, land grabbing, environmental degradation, and food
versus cash crops for various industrial uses, including bio-energy [
11,
12,
13].
A body of literature highlights the fact that tropical deforestation may be substantially and increasingly driven by globalized industries and transnationals rather than by rural farmers. This literature also emphasizes the need to target strategic corporations [
14]. Surprisingly, this body of literature does not delve into the mechanisms, drivers or determinants of transnationals and large business groups’ actions and behavior.
Economic and management sciences have already explored in detail how the behavior of business groups and large corporations are vastly more complex than simply what buyers’ preferences dictate to them. Building on earlier theories [
15,
16], the seminal works of Porter [
17,
18] in the 1980s showed how a complex system of interactions between the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, threats of new raw materials and entrants, threats of new substitutes to products and services and finally, rivalry among firms, result in a vast array of possible and different corporate strategies and subsequent behaviors. Other research demonstrated that there is a powerful relationship between the ownership structure of big business groups and their behavior [
19,
20,
21,
22]. This means that the financial structure of a group, that is the topology of the network formed by its subsidiaries, has a major influence on the behavior of the group. This behavior has variants that may depend on the culture of the ultimate shareholders controlling the group, or the place in the world where the group has its base [
23,
24].
In the specific case of Southeast Asian conglomerates, much research has detailed their propensity to display an extremely complex and opaque structure, of interlaced cross-shareholdings. Their activities usually cover many different sectors, from agriculture and timber to logistics, property, banking, media and services. The high level of cross-shareholding allow them both to increase the ultimate control by one family, and to be extremely adaptable to policy and market changes, by quickly transferring their financial assets from sector to sector, according to the changes in market conditions [
25]. Most literature has been preoccupied with the cultural aspects of these business networks, searching the reasons for their success in ethnic capitalism, Confucian values, or other overseas-Chinese cultural traits [
26,
27,
28,
29,
30]. This would point to the importance of ethnic-business and cultural factors, but at the same time other authors also describe similar conglomerates and business groups in extremely different cultural contexts, such as Indian business networks and the case of the Olam group (where most of the managers and the family who controls the company are ethnic Indians) [
31,
32], or the Korean conglomerates known as
chaebols [
33,
34] and Japanese conglomerates known as
keiretsu [
35]. All of these other Asian networks, are quite similar in structure, organization, flexibility, cross-shareholding and opacity, but obviously do not share the same culture as the ethnic Chinese groups. This calls for functional approaches, trying to understand what may be the factors beyond culture, nationality, ethnicity,
etc. Similarly, many of these Asian business groups seem to be tightly controlled by one family, but not all of them. Much of the management literature also discusses how the issue of ownership helps to understand the behavior of business groups [
20,
36,
37,
38,
39,
40].
Some scholars have explored why corporations decide to obtain—or not—various types of environmental certification in the Western [
41] or Southern [
42] Hemisphere. However, apart from Rugman [
43] who has worked on how western multinationals behave according to their ownership structure, there is a gap in the literature in understanding the mechanisms of corporate governance with respect to environmental commitments by transnationals. This paper aims to reduce this gap using Southeast Asian examples. Although social network analysis tools have been used for many years to describe network relationships between companies [
44,
45], recent progress in computing power allows the analysis of very large corporate networks to assess their degree of control over various economic or social factors [
46,
47]. A growing number of papers now explore quantitatively the behavior of large business groups through network metrics analyzed from their ownership or financial structure, compared to various behavioral criteria [
48,
49,
50].
Using network analysis, we analyzed the ownership structures of a few Southeast Asian transnationals. We determined the topology of their network of subsidiaries, and compared it to their uptake of certification, as a proxy indicator of their environmental commitment. Our hypothesis is that the topology of their ownership structure might be as important for their environmental commitment as other external market factors.
Next section describes the collection of data on transnationals, their selection and the analysis of their audited accounts. It explains the use of network analysis on the web of subsidiaries and shareholders, and the use eco-certification as a proxy of environmental commitment. The main findings are that ownership structures reflect clear differences in flexibility, control and transaction costs, but not in ethnicities. Additionally, capital and its control, ownership structure and flexibility explain 97% of the environmental behavior. The discussion section draws the limitations of this work, elaborates on the possible effects of exposure to mass markets, and explores the implications for sustainability.
2. Material and Methods
2.1. Selection of Transnationals and Analysis of Their Audited Accounts
A number of transnationals are significant players in oil palm plantations, the timber trade and other tree plantations in Southeast Asia. These activities have sometimes been criticized by environmental groups. The key Southeast Asian agribusiness transnationals to be regularly cited in the news and non-governmental organization reports, are Wilmar, Sinar Mas [
51], Sime Darby, Olam [
52], Ta Ann, and WTK [
51,
53,
54]. We experienced difficulties in reconstructing the network of companies of Wilmar, a Singapore-listed group that belongs to the bigger Kuok conglomerate based in Hong Kong, and Sinar Mas group (most of the Indonesian audited accounts were not easily available within the time frame of the study). However, we managed to collect extensive data about the companies involved in Olam, Sime Darby, Ta Ann and WTK transnationals for the year 2010. We started with an analysis of the audited accounts of these groups, available at the Singapore and Kuala Lumpur stock exchanges. From there, we reconstructed step by step the ownership structure, by collecting the financial information of each company within the network, providing its own owners and subsidiaries, to establish the organizational boundaries of each transnational. We identified 931 major companies and legal entities constituting these four transnationals, regrouped in
Table 1 with the listed capital and the nature of ownership of each transnational to highlight their key differences.
Table 1.
Financial characteristics of the data set, in 2010.
Table 1.
Financial characteristics of the data set, in 2010.
Transnational | Number of Companies | Market Capital (Million US $) | Repartition of Ownership | Diversification Investment Strategy | Ethnicity of Ultimate Controllers |
---|
Family | Government | Others |
---|
WTK | 78 | 70 | 47.86% | 1.69% | 49.55% | Related | Chinese |
Ta Ann | 101 | 90 | 50.25% | 9.36% | 40.39% | Related | Chinese |
Olam | 172 | 1680 | 22% | 14.40% | 63.60% | Related | Indian |
Sime Darby | 580 | 1820 | 0% | 67.86% | 32.14% | Unrelated | - |
Total | 931 | 3660 | | | | | |
WTK Holding Berhad is the flagship company of the WTK group. It was established in 1940 in Sibu, Malaysia, in order to obtain forest concessions and licenses to trade in logs. Three sons of the late Wong Tuong Kwuong head the group: Wong Kie Nai, Wong Kie Chie and Wong Kie Yik. They own the majority of shares and they also manage the group. WTK Holding Berhad has subsidiaries operating throughout Asia, and the USA. WTK’s main focus is timber log extraction and sawn timber and plywood production. The principal activities of the subsidiaries are: Manufacturing and sale of veneer, plywood, sawn timber and logs; trading in tapes, foil and papers; reforestation; general and commission agent; property investment and car park operation.
Ta Ann Holding Berhad is the flagship company of the Ta Ann group. It was founded in 1980 in Kuching, Malaysia, with connections to Sarawakian politicians led by Datuk Wahab Bin Haji Dolah and Datuk Abdul Hamed Bin Haji Sepawi. Dato Wong Kuo Hea and his family control the group. The first company was a trading company and started timber extraction from forest concessions located in Sarawak. The main activities of Ta Ann Holding Berhad are in palm oil, timber trading, and manufacturing of plywood and wood products. Ta Ann subsidiaries operate in Asia and Oceania. Three main persons control the group: Dato Wong Kuo Hea, Datuk Abdul Hamed Bin Haji Sepawi and Datuk Wahab Bin Haji Dolah. The observations, confirmed by subsequent analysis, showed that Dato Wong Kuo Hea is the main player in the network, and that he is the ultimate controller of the group through the shares retained by his relatives.
Olam International Limited is the flagship company of the Olam group. It is a general agriculture trading company with headquarters in Singapore. The Kewalram Chanrai group, another large group of companies created and controlled by the Chanrai family, founded Olam in 1989, with Sunny Verghese, an Indian employee of the Kewalram Chanrai group as its main shareholder. Originally operating in textiles, the diversification of the Chanrai group started in the years 1904–1910 from British India to many British colonies in Asia and East Africa. Chanrai has investments in various sectors, and created sub-groups such as Olam, Afri-ventures, Pt Kewalram, and Redington. Olam now has subsidiaries in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and throughout Asia. The group claims to have specific know-how for operating in countries generally considered risky for investors, including Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria, among others. Sunny Verghese, Narain Girdhar Chanrai and Rangareddy Jayachandran control Olam.
Sime Darby Berhad is the flagship company of the Sime Darby group. It was formed in 1910 by European owners in the (then) British colony of Malaya, for rubber and cocoa, and later oil palm plantations. In the late 1970s Malaysian investors acquired half of the equity. In the 1980s, the group became a wholly Malaysian-owned company when the Malaysian government acquired supplementary shares through Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), Malaysia’s biggest fund management company. The group was initially listed at the London Stock Exchange, and was subsequently relisted at the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange. In 2007, Sime Darby and two other agribusiness groups (Guthrie Berhad and Golden Hope) merged into Synergy Drive. It was then renamed as Sime Darby Berhad, and has become one of the major Malaysia-based transnationals. The group is involved in five core sectors: Plantations, property, industrial, motors and energy & utilities. It has subsidiaries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.
2.2. Network Analysis
To analyze this data, we applied network analysis that quantifies and qualifies the relationships among the players, according to their number, direction, intensity, and with respect to the rest of the players of a group, their own interactions, and the structure of the whole system [
47]. Specific software exists to compute social analysis and network metrics, such as Pajek, Gephi, and Cytoscape. [
45,
55,
56]. We used Cytoscape here [
56] for its data handling capabilities, which makes it convenient to transfer financial and ownership information from our data set. Cytoscape also has good visualization capabilities.
There is usually a separation between ownership and real control in Southeast Asian transnationals [
25]. Within the complexity of cross-shareholdings of a transnational, it might be difficult to identify the ultimate controlling shareholders. One solution is to compute all the percentages of ownership from a subsidiary to all its owners. For example, company A might own only 29% of company D, but still with A being indirectly the ultimate controller of D because A directly controls B who directly controls D (see
Figure 1, adapted from Tekusova [
57]). Usually simple threshold rules, variable according to the specific financial regulations of the country of incorporation, determine when a company gets a direct control over a subsidiary. For example the threshold can be 50% in one country, and 30% in another one. In our data, the same 50% threshold of ownership was applied to all companies to determine the direct control rights.
Alternatively, the degree of influence of all the companies over the transnationals and their various functions and roles, can be deduced from several network metrics, according to different criteria (ownership control, information flow, speed of decision for flexibility,
etc). The main categories of these metrics are various kinds of centrality measures, as well as centralization, clustering and other network topology measures. Most of the meaning of these network metrics can be obscure when applied to networks of companies, thus we have translated them into economic terms. For example, the betweenness centrality of a company is the number of hierarchic shortest lines passing through one company, compared to all the other shortest lines. It is an index of the real control exerted by one company over the other companies within the transnational. In economic terms, it is a shareholding betweenness index, and it is a measure of the average corporate control within the transnational or among its companies. This particular index allows the identification of the ultimate controlling companies of the group, either through their indirect ownership, or through the flow of decisions, which have to go through them. Some of the metrics apply at the level of the player (company in our case) or at the level of the group (transnational in our case), or even sub-groups such as cliques and sub-cliques [
58,
59]. Simple metrics that provide a general description of the transnationals include the number of companies, number of direct ownership links, size of the transnational in terms of maximum or successive ownership links, and intensity of cross-shareholdings. More complex metrics describe the repartition of companies and the topology of their network.
Figure 1.
Simple ownership structure with ultimate shareholding controller, and controlled subsidiaries. The percentages attached to each ownership arrow represent the proportion of ownership of one company by another company. The percentages within the box represent the real ownership by company A, which might be lower than the real control.
Figure 1.
Simple ownership structure with ultimate shareholding controller, and controlled subsidiaries. The percentages attached to each ownership arrow represent the proportion of ownership of one company by another company. The percentages within the box represent the real ownership by company A, which might be lower than the real control.
The group-level metrics, which have some meaning at the scale of a transnational are listed in
Table 2, with their economic meaning and associated comments. These metrics can also be computed at the company level, with a few variants according to the direction of the ownership links.
Table 2.
Network metrics and their meaning for ownership structures in economic terms. (The equations of the networks metrics were taken from [
43,
44,
45,
46,
47] and from the supplementary materials of [
60]. The economic meaning and comments are by the authors).
Table 2.
Network metrics and their meaning for ownership structures in economic terms. (The equations of the networks metrics were taken from [43,44,45,46,47] and from the supplementary materials of [60]. The economic meaning and comments are by the authors).
Network Metrics | Equation | | Economic Meaning | Comment |
---|
Network clustering coefficient | | (1) | Average Cross-shareholding coefficient | (1) is an average of the clustering indices of all the companies of the ownership structure. This coefficient expresses the average degree of cross-shareholding within the shareholder structure. |
Average shortest path length | | (2) | Average ownership tier | (2) is the average shortest distance between two companies within the ownership structure. It is similar to the average tier rank of subsidiaries, but it applies both vertically and horizontally. |
% of shortest paths | | (3) | Co-management index | Expressed as a % or as a fraction, (3) is the number of shortest ownership lines over the maximum theoretical possible number of direct shareholdings. |
Clustering coefficient | | (4) | Cross-shareholding coefficient | (4) is a ratio of the number of actual ownership links of one company with its direct shareholders and subsidiaries, over the theoretical possible number of cross-shareholdings of all these direct shareholders and companies. This coefficient expresses the degree of cross-shareholding around one company. |
Reciprocal of % of shortest paths | | (5) | Hierarchy index | Expressed as a % or as a fraction, (5) is the reciprocal of the number of shortest ownership lines over the maximum theoretical possible number of direct shareholdings. The higher it is, the more hierarchical the ownership structure is. The structure forms pyramids of tiered subsidiaries. The structure tends to look like a pyramid or a star. |
Geodesic distance | | (6) | Tier | (6) is the number of successive ownership links between two companies |
Number of nodes | | (7) | Number of companies | (7) is the size of the group, in number of companies. |
Number of shortest paths | | (8) | Number of shortest ownership lines | (8) is the shortest ownership lines are the smallest ownership distance (horizontally or vertically) between two given companies within the ownership structure. There are a limited number of these shortest ownership lines, which is always a fraction of the maximum theoretical possible number of direct ownership pairs. The smaller the number of ownership lines, the more hierarchical is the ownership structure. |
Network diameter | | (9) | Ownership structure diameter | (9) is the largest distance between two companies within the ownership structure. It is similar to the largest tier rank of subsidiaries, but it applies both vertically and horizontally. |
Betweenness centrality | | (10) | Shareholding betweenness | (10) is the number of shortest ownership lines passing through one company, compared to all the shortest ownership lines. It is an index of the real control exerted by one company over the ownership structure. |
Closeness centrality | | (11) | Shareholding closeness | (11) is the reciprocal of the average shortest distance between two companies within the ownership structure (reciprocal of B = Average ownership tier). This index expresses how fast board decisions or strategic adaptations can be transmitted or propagated within the ownership structures. |
Stress centrality | | (13) | Shareholding stress | (12) is the absolute number of shortest ownership lines passing through one company. It is a index of the time taken to apply a decision to the group, or of the internal transaction cost. |
2.3. Eco-Certification as a Proxy of Environmental Commitment
In order to understand if the corporate structure has an impact on the company’s commitment to adopt sustainable practices, we adopted two key certification schemes of sustainable forest management (Forest Stewardship Council-FSC), and of sustainable oil palm plantation management (Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil—RSPO) as criteria of commitment (
i.e., “minima”), see
Table 3. This study is not in a position to judge the effective sustainability of such eco-certification and associated practices in the field, or to assess if the existence of such certification schemes represents green washing [
61,
62] or real commitments by the transnationals studied. These transnationals also invest in other economic sectors such as real estate, which are not directly relevant to such environmental schemes. On this particular matter, the construction sector eventually possesses a suite of green building indexes [
63], but remotely connected to forest and palm oil certification schemes. We selected all the relevant sectors and noted which companies of which groups were certified at the time of the study and under which scheme. We also noted all the companies of the relevant sectors, with ascending or descending ownership links with the certified companies, but which were not certified themselves.
A factorial map was built, with each company of the transnationals being associated with the presence or absence of such certification schemes. As such, we consider the presence or absence of various environmental certificates, as a proxy indicator of a certain level of environmental commitment, be it genuine or not. In addition, the data set also associates to each company its various network metrics with their economic meaning, as well as the country of origin of the transnational, the eventual ethnic character of the management of the transnational, and the transnational financial specificities such as its diversification and investment strategy, as deduced from audited accounts. Independently of a possible normative criticism of the quality of the existing eco-certificates to assess the environmental commitment, this data set allows us to explore if some ownership structure mechanism, or other economic factors, can be linked, at least to some degree, to nominal environmental commitment. We used FactoMineR, a package of the statistical software R, in order to conduct supervised and unsupervised statistical explorations of the links between these factors, and to determine if some specific factors have more influence over the uptake of eco-certification.
Table 3.
Nature of environmental commitment, by transnational.
Table 3.
Nature of environmental commitment, by transnational.
Transnational | Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) | Pan European Forest Certificate (PEFC) | Any Forest Certificate | Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) | Any Forest or Palm Oil Certificate |
---|
WTK | - | - | - | - | - |
Ta Ann | - | Yes | Yes | - | Yes |
Olam | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Sime Darby | - | - | - | Yes | Yes |
4. Discussion
The fact that 97% of the environmental behavior of Southeast Asian agribusiness transnationals is influenced by the amount of listed capital, ownership structure, adaptability and flexibility. This implies that 3% or less is explained by market mechanisms. This consideration certainly draws attention to the fact that Southeast Asian agribusiness transnationals target, in particular, the markets of emerging countries whilst specializing in South-South exchanges. Their exposure to eco-sensitive markets is generally low. This is especially true when considering tropical timber trade: The relatively eco-sensitive Western world represents less than 6% of the world consumption of tropical timbers. Conversely, the Western world represents at least one third of the world market for palm oil, which could also account for the reasons pushing Sime Darby and Olam to commit to the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. But clearly this is not enough for Ta Ann and WTK. Indeed at the scale of the ultimate shareholders of such transnationals, the Oil Palm sector is only one sector among others. Unfortunately, the time frame of the study did not allow for a consolidation of the relative size of the various transnationals’ investments in various sectors both in comparison to each other and in comparison to the other sectors in their particular portfolios. The next steps of the research will explore how these various sectors relate to each other, and what it means in terms of financial investments and risks.
Even if the palm oil sector is an extremely profitable one (as shown in the accounts of a transnational such as Ta Ann), the marketing and assumed price advantages of adopting eco-certification might not be worth the organizational costs when compared to the need to preserve flexibility and adaptability. In contrast, Sime Darby is more hierarchical organization that is more exposed to issues of a political nature, and hence, its managers might not perceive a greater commitment to environmental sustainability as a major constraint. This still does not explain, however, why Olam, a big transnational in terms of capital, but one that retains a high degree of flexibility like Ta Ann and WTK and commitments to both oil palm and forest certification.
It could well be that Olam and Sime Darby, which have higher exposure of their stocks in the mass market (in relative or absolute figures), are more sensitive to global environmental campaigns. In 2013, Olam’s accountability practices were negatively commented on in the media, and it triggered a spectacular fall in share values on the stock exchange. Negative environmental campaigns by the media can have huge impacts that can push smallholders to sell, causing similar falls. This could be a concern for transnationals such as Sime Darby and Olam, if their mass smallholders are already eco-sensitive. Conversely, transnationals with ownership structures distinguished by a higher degree of flexibility, adaptability and some degree of risk management, and with a much lower proportion of smallholders per company, may commit less to environmental sustainability. This happens except in countries where national and local government institutions are able to effectively govern compliance with environmental policies. One of the very flexible transnationals, Ta Ann, has a company certified under the chain of custody of the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). It buys its raw material from forests managed by Forestry Tasmania, a Government Enterprise certified under the Australian Forest Standard, which is endorsed by PEFC. This situation imposes itself onto the company, as a governance framework to which it adapts. A proper analogy would be that this kind of Southeast Asian transnational adapts to any institutional context, as a liquid adopts the shape of its container.
Furthermore, our findings have far reaching implications when considering the various efforts to engage the private sector to promote forest sustainability, and the failure to do so by relying simply on market-based tools, as discussed in the Introduction. These findings do not imply that norms and ecocertification standards are not useful and hence, should be scrapped. They may be necessary to prove to interested consumers, investors, or any other concerned groups that some environmental norms or procedures are followed and respected. The network analysis of corporate structures showed that the control of transnationals can be located quite far from their flagship companies. This implies that the stakeholders, who want to debate with these transnationals, or to have an influence on them, should be very careful with whom they engage, and at which level. Private market-based regulatory tools, as discussed in the Introduction, are not effective at the scale where the key determinants of corporate behavior apply for Southeast Asian transnationals, and most probably, other South-South transnationals [
69]. The best approach would, nevertheless, be to directly engage the ultimate shareholders. How to engage them remains an open question, and this creates exciting perspectives for new themes of research. Such an approach would critically depend on how meaningful it would be for the overall strategy of the rest of the business group, with all its interlinked sectors.
Additional research needs to investigate the relationships between necessary competiveness, and long-term patrimonial issues, or the intergenerational transmission of “sustainable” businesses, as perceived by the families that control Southeast Asian transnationals. We also found that the complexity ownership structures is linked to the need for flexibility and adaptability. Within the context of more or less high “country risks”, business groups are involved in cut-throat competition and face absolute imperatives for flexibility and adaptability. It might be an economic utopia to expect them to take over from failing governments, in terms of their environmental commitments. The imperatives of flexibility and adaptability and opaque ownership structures do not mean that the concepts of accountability and sustainability are not negotiable with Southeast Asian transnationals. On the contrary, these imperatives and structures are clearly instruments for long-term patrimonial issues and intergenerational family ethics in unstable economic or political environments. The literature on ethnic, diasporic and family businesses amply demonstrates that sustainability is at the core of the organization and strategies of Southeast Asian transnationals. But this particular type of sustainability is an economic and profit-motivated one, designed to ensure prosperity of the same kinship group over several generations. Several examples exist, which demonstrate that these transnational entrepreneurs commit entirely to the next generation of the controlling family [
25,
28]. Finally, for the stakeholders who would like to engage the private sector in order to promote forest sustainability, the challenge would then be: How do we make environmental and family business sustainability coincide?