**1. Introduction**

Today, in most world economies, we observe intense processes of globalization, rapid economic growth, and significant institutional and social changes [1–6]. An increase in production, competitiveness, investments, and innovations in these countries, as well as changes in the labor market and consumer patterns [7–11], leads to a systematic increase in energy consumption [12,13]. The continuous increase in the demand for energy causes the resources of energy from non-renewable sources to be no longer sufficient, and its production becomes more expensive and harmful to the environment [14,15]. This situation forces an intensive energy transformation in most countries, including the countries of the European Union [16,17]. Energy transformation is understood as a transition from the

**Citation:** Bukalska, E.; Zinecker, M.; Pietrzak, M.B. Socioemotional Wealth (SEW) of Family Firms and CEO Behavioral Biases in the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). *Energies* **2021**, *14*, 7411. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/en14217411

Academic Editors: Tomasz Korol and Beata Zofia Filipiak

Received: 29 October 2021 Accepted: 3 November 2021 Published: 7 November 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

current energy system using non-renewable sources to an energy system based mainly on renewable and low-emission sources. In the European Union, a transition to a sustainable and green economy has become a strategic goal in the fight against climate change, leading to improved energy security, competitiveness, and attractiveness of the economies of Member States [18–20]. The institutional actions of the European Union are in line with the voice of 193 member states of the UN, who in September 2015 put forth the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [Agenda 2030] which assumes joint actions to "combine economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability" [21,22].

Agenda 2030 is focused on the implementation of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that aim to mitigate negative externalities of human activity [21]. In the EU, these agreements have become the basis for achieving improvements against climate change (SDG 13), sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12), protection and conservation of biodiversity (SDGs 14 and 15), and sustainable agriculture and food systems (SDG 2) (Institute for European Environmental Policy, 2019). The EU defined three priority areas to support the achievement of SDGs: (1) Internal priorities for the EU and member states; (2) European diplomacy and development cooperation; and (3) Tackling negative international spillovers [21]. In terms of internal priorities, the focus on sustainable energy production, sustainable land use and food production, and sustainable internal closed-loop systems is intended to lead to the achievement of sustainable development goals [21]. According to the EU strategy, the actions are meant to lead to a situation in which, in 2050, Europe will be the first continent that is neutral in terms of climate and the environment. In the EU, a systematic process of sustainable transformation of the economies of its member states is underway [23]. It is stressed that the objectives of sustainable development can only be achieved through deep institutional changes in most dimensions of the economy [24].

In this transformation, entrepreneurship plays an essential role, which can best translate into the implementation of sustainable development goals by selected countries or the entire EU. In recent years, the concept of sustainable entrepreneurship has been at the forefront of interest in both academic research and global social discourse. As noted by Kraus [25], sustainable entrepreneurship requires an entrepreneurial reorientation towards 'a more ecological, social and economic equilibrium', while 'discovery and exploiting economic opportunities', conversely, is the fundamental aspect of conventional entrepreneurial theories. In the case of sustainable entrepreneurship, investments, innovations, business angels, and family businesses are exchanged among those responsible for its positive development [26–29]. This article focuses on the potential impact on the development of sustainable entrepreneurship on the part of family businesses, which, due to the multitude of these type of business entities in the entire economy, seems to be an important research problem.

During the last decade, a great deal of research has emerged on environmental, sustainable, and green (ESG) entrepreneurship [30–32]. Entrepreneurial ESG projects that contribute to the SDGs are based on radical innovation and very often originate in emerging and young firms (start-ups), implying their strong contribution to the transition to a sustainable economy [33]. Prior research has demonstrated that family firms also contribute significantly to the achievement of SDGs. However, their ability to create new technologies, jobs, and wealth, and thus to conduct decisions in order to become and stay competitive in the long term, might be negatively affected by the risk aversion [27]. Innovations are costly, and one strand of research suggests that family firms avoid uncertain activities more than their nonfamily counterparts, resulting in a general lower level of R&D spending and innovations [34–36]. Following this argument, family firms should initially lag behind non-family firms in terms of reflecting and achieving the SDGs. On the other hand, there is increasing empirical evidence that SDG-related activities have very often been successful, and therefore a catch-up process should also be started in family firms with respect to their innovation efforts. Furthermore, notable theoretical work points to the strong focus on longevity in family firms, that is, accumulation and conservation of wealth

for future generations, and thus less volatile behavior in terms of consistent implementation of activities that support the SDGs, innovations, and performance [26,27,37].

In analyzing sustainable family-owned entrepreneurship and its drivers, the academic literature also aims to understand the relationship between sustainability and entrepreneurial financial strategies. A basic tenet of classical financial theory is that family businesses, in contrast to their non-family counterparts, operate largely within the framework of sustainable entrepreneurship and thus contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to their conservative values and lower propensity to take risks, resulting in preferring less risky financial options [38]. Non-family businesses, in pursuit of risk and as a result of consciously bearing higher risk, will pursue an aggressive financial strategy, which in most cases precludes sustainable entrepreneurship. Therefore, family firms have been argued to be much more capable of creating sustainable entrepreneurship and contributing to SDGs compared to their non-family peers, which could be more threatened by agency conflicts between different stakeholders and CEO opportunism, overconfidence, and aggressive financial strategies [38–40].

The dominant role of the CEO in creating entrepreneurship and company survival has been widely discussed in the academic literature [41–43]. This is especially true for small- and medium-family companies that rely on personal relationships. These family ties are essential. Recently, the development of the behavioral attitude in investigation towards CEO decision-making opens new opportunities in terms of further research. One of these behavioral characteristics is overconfidence, which has been the subject of increasing research interest [43]. Overconfident CEOs are most often the subject of aggressive financial strategies focused on achieving above-average profits while exposing companies to higher risks. In such a constellation, it is difficult to establish sustainable entrepreneurship and follow SDGs. This is due to the fact that SDG-compliant projects require higher investments, longer payback times, and lower margins. This led us to explore the factors affecting financial strategies in family firms and thus their contribution towards more sustainable development.

The main aim of the article is to investigate whether differences in corporate financial strategies can be detected in a sample of Polish firms with regards to both the status of the company (family or non-family) and the characteristics of the CEOs (overconfident or non-overconfident). To the best of our knowledge, we contribute to the literature two-fold. First, there is a paucity of empirical studies analyzing the relationship between ownership structure and financial strategies with regards to the characteristics of CEOs. Second, our contribution is also of a methodological nature, as we study the aspect of sustainability in a novel way. We do so by interlinking two areas of academic literature: one on family firms and one on sustainable financial strategy. Our results suggest that in non-family firms more aggressive attitudes to financing are being pursued by overconfident CEOs. Additionally, family firms are a coherent group that implements more conservative corporate financial strategies regardless of the characteristics of the CEO. We imply that family power can curb CEO overconfidence and its impact on financial strategy.

We believe that our findings have important implications for firm owners, investors, and policy decision makers as these findings prove that managerial overconfidence and the family status of the firm have an impact on financial strategies. Another implication is that the family status of the company might mitigate managerial overconfidence and thus contribute to more sustainable development.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: We begin with a theoretical background that describes the role of CEOs in family firms, allowing us to raise research questions and justify research hypotheses. In the next section, we outline the methodology. The section after that presents the research findings. The last sections contain the discussion and main conclusions.
