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ABSTRACT. This paper offers directions for the continuing dialogue between business ethicists and environmental philosophers. I argue that a theory of corporate social responsibility must be consistent with, if not derived from, a model of sustainable economics rather than the prevailing neoclassical model of market economics. I use environmental examples to critique both classical and neoclassical models of corporate social responsibility and sketch the alternative model of sustainable development. After describing some implications of this model at the level of individual firms and industries, I offer an ethical justification of the sustainability alternative that is derived from the same values that underlie traditional market economics.
This paper offers directions for the continuing dialogue between business ethicists and environmental philosophers. I hope to focus that conversation onto a topic that is critical to each field: corporate social responsibility in the age of sustainable economics. While a longer-range challenge is to work out the specific ethical implications that a shift to sustainable economics would have for individual firms and industries, this paper is more programmatic. Here, I seek only to lay the conceptual groundwork for such a project and suggest directions for future work.
An adequate account of corporate environmental responsibility should do two things: it should address the entire range of environmental and ecological issues affected by business decisions in a way that might actually turn the tide of environmental and ecological deterioration; and it should be capable of influencing business policy. It seems to me that much of the work done by business ethicists to date fails the first criterion; much work done by environmental ethicists fails on the second.
A brief consideration of the present economic, population and ecological realities suggests the importance of integrating these fields. Consider three relevant facts. First, a significant percentage of the world's population live at or below a minimal level of subsistence. One quarter of the world's population live in industrialized countries and they consume 80 percent of the world's goods. To meet just the simple needs and minimum demands of the other 75 percent of the world's population, significant economic activity is necessary over the next few decades. One estimate holds that a fivefold increase in energy use and a five-to-tenfold increase in economic activity would...