Keeping it in the Family artwork
Transforming Tomorrow

Keeping it in the Family

  • S1E13
  • 27:44
  • December 18th 2023

There are almost five million family businesses in the UK alone. They are all around us, and have been for thousands of years. But what do we mean when we talk about family businesses?

Dr Allan Discua Cruz, Director of the Centre for Family Business at Lancaster University Management School, speaks to Jan and Paul about his personal experiences growing up in a family business, the issue of succession and longevity, how family firms address sustainability and consider the Sustainable Development Goals, and how faith and religion can impact their environmental behaviours.

Find out more about the Centre for Family Business here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lums/research/areas-of-expertise/centre-for-family-business/

Transforming Tomorrow

Sustainability is a key consideration for any contemporary business, from biodiversity to modern slavery, seabeds to factory floors. On Transforming Tomorrow, we’ll guide you through the complex, ever-changing and often exciting (yes, really!!) world of sustainability in business. Alongside members of the Pentland Centre, academic experts, and business leaders, we cover the theory and practice of mainstreaming social and environmental sustainability into purposeful business strategy and performance.

Whether you are leading change in your business, or just want to know more about how asteroid mining may influence the future of sustainability, Transforming Tomorrow is the show for you.

Taking you through it all are your hosts, Jan and Paul, who bring insight, perspective, and not a little amount of disagreement, to all the subjects.

Join us every Monday to uncover new insights and become a little more inspired that you can make a difference in sustainability.

Send your questions on any of the issues we discuss in Transforming Tomorrow to [email protected] or fill in our feedback form here: https://forms.office.com/e/7Bw4rDiRDt

Find out more about the Pentland Centre and its work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/pentland/

https://doc.your-brochure-online.co.uk/Lancaster-University_Transforming-Tomorrow/

Meet the Hosts

Jan Bebbington avatar
Jan Bebbington
Co-Host

Professor Jan Bebbington is the Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University. Jan is an expert on accounting, benchmarking (to her co-host’s annoyance), and how business and sustainability intersect.

Jan loves nature and wants to protect it – and hopes she can change the world (ideally for the better). She is also motivated to address inequality wherever it is found and especially to eliminate forced, bonded or child labour. Transforming Tomorrow is one small step on that quest.

Paul Turner avatar
Paul Turner
Co-Host

Paul Turner is a former sports journalist who now works promoting the research activities in Lancaster University Management School – a poacher turned gamekeeper as his former colleagues would have it.

Paul has always been interested in nature and the natural environment – it comes from growing up in Cumbria – and has been a vocal proponent of the work of the Pentland Centre since joining Lancaster University. He does not like rankings and benchmarking, and is not afraid to say so.