Business, Ethics, and the Environment: Imagining a Sustainable Future

For courses in Business Ethics, Business and Society, Applied Ethics, and Environmental Ethics.

This is the first text to bring the sustainability paradigm to the forefront of management and business ethics.

The concept of sustainability and sustainable development has taken hold throughout the world as a new guiding principle of economic development.  Sustainability involves “meeting the real needs of the present without so harming the biosphere that future generations will be unable to meet their own needs.”  As used by such institutions as the United Nations and the World Bank, sustainable development usually applies to entire economies and societies, and less so to industries and individual businesses.  Yet already some corporations, especially in Europe, have adopted sustainable business practices.  The future is clear: given present global environmental, population, and poverty trends, economic institutions will be judged by how well they meet environmental and ethical, as well as economic, goals.  Joseph R. Desjardins wrote this book to make the case for this claim.

Table of contents

Preface

Chapter One: The Coming Age of  Sustainable Business

            Introduction

            Economics, Ecology, Ethics 

            Individuals, Government, and Business

            Economic Growth: Problem or Solution?

            The Sustainability Paradigm

            Sustainability as Social Justice

            Sustainability: Two Caveats

Chapter Two: The Biosphere: Facts and Values

            Introduction

            I = PAT

            State of the Biosphere

                        Food

                        Climate

                        Energy

            Values and the Biosphere: Pragmatism and Diversity

Chapter Three: Economic Growth, Free Markets, and Business Responsibility

            Introduction

            Economic Growth as the Economic Good

            Free Market Environmentalism

            Free Market Ethics

            Corporate Social Responsibility and the Standard Model

            Corporate Environmental Responsibility

Chapter Four: The failure of market-based policies

            Introduction

            Critique of Growth-Base Market Model: Internal Challenges

            Critique of Growth-Base Market Model: External Challenges

            The Ethics of the Conventional Model

            Summary and Conclusions

Chapter Five: Ecological Economics and Sustainable Business Ethics

            Introduction

            Ecological Economics

            Policy Implications of Ecological Economics: Accounting for Natural Capital

            Policy Implications of Ecological Economics: Globalized Trade and Finance

            Ecological Economics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Chapter Six:  The “Business Case” for Sustainability and Sustainable Business Models         

            Introduction

            The Business Case for Sustainability

            Models for Sustainable Business: Natural Capitalism and Industrial Ecology

            Models for Sustainable Business: The Natural Step and Cradle-to-Cradle

Chapter Seven: Sustainable Production and Sustainable Products

            Introduction

            Sustainable Products

            Sustainable Production: Pollution and Waste

            Life-Cycle Responsibility, Dematerialization, and Sustainable Energy Use

            Business as Consumers: Supply-Chain Responsibility

Chapter Eight:  Sustainable Consumption

            Introduction

            Sustainable Consumption

            Consumption: Too Much of a Good Thing?

            Why do we Consume as we do?

            Business’ Responsibility for Consumption

            Philosophical Reflections on Consumerism

Chapter Nine: Creating Sustainable Professions and Sustainable

     Communities

            Introduction

            Sustainable Marketing

            Sustainable Accounting, Auditing, Finance

            Sustainable HR and Operations

            Sustainable Communities

• Diverse material.  The movement toward sustainable business is emerging from a diversity of venues and academic disciplines, ranging from economics and philosophy to architecture and finance.  This text brings these diverse materials together.
  • Unifies the material into a coherent and straightforward format.
• Range of ethical issues.  It is often said that sustainability rests on three pillars:  economic, ecological, and ethical.  This text highlights the ethical questions and challenges that accompany the move towards sustainability within business.
  • Helps students understand how to overcome the obstacles that come with moving toward sustainability.
• Solution-oriented.  This text examines the many ways that business is changing, and should change, to meet the demands of a sustainable future.   It argues that to become sustainable, business institutions must find a way to be economically vibrant enough to meet the real needs of a global population of 6 billion people without jeopardizing the health of the biosphere on which all human life depends.  
  • Encourages students to think of solutions to ensure sustainability.

How do you help your students to understand such an interdisciplinary field? 

• Clear and accessible style.  Because this field is fundamentally interdisciplinary, it is important that conversations about sustainability be as free from academic and disciplinary jargon as possible.
  • Helps students understand issues of sustainability without a background in the discipline being discussed.

Would you like a text that blends philosophical and ethical analysis with real-world practical cases and examples to show what sustainable business can and should become?

• Chapters 1-6 focus on the theoretical and philosophical aspects of sustainable business. 
  • Chapter One provides the preliminary case for a shift to sustainable business models. 
  • Chapter Two offers a glimpse of the present state of the earth’s ecology, highlighting those areas that pose the most significant challenges to environmental sustainability. 
  • Chapter Three describes the dominant economic paradigm of growth and free markets, the major alternative to sustainable business, and spells out the models of corporate social responsibility that follow from that paradigm. 
  • Chapter Four provides a detailed critique of this dominant paradigm and defends a more active role for business institutions in addressing these challenges. 
  • Chapter Five presents the alternative economic model of sustainable economics, and sketches an alternative understanding of corporate social responsibility. 
  • Chapter Six make the business case for the shift to sustainability and provides descriptions of several conceptual frameworks that can guide the evolution of sustainable businesses.
• Chapters 7-9 focus on the more practical and managerial side of corporate sustainability.  These chapters provide an ethical framework for sustainable business.  They indicate several practical developments already contributing to the emergence of sustainable business. 
  • Chapter Seven examines the question of sustainable production, investigating both the products themselves and the entire production process from the perspective of sustainability. 
  • Chapter Eight examines the issue of consumerism and considers business’ responsibilities for hindering or encouraging sustainable consumption. 
  • Chapter Nine offers some thoughts concerning new directions that can be expected in the evolution of sustainable business.  Major business professions and the functional areas within business are already beginning to address sustainability issues within their own domain.  Further, business’ role in creating sustainable communities adds a social dimension that is often overlooked in standard discussions of business ethics. 

Are you interested in exploring other areas in ethics? 

Business, Ethics, and Sustainability is part of the Basic Ethics in Action series.  See below for a complete listing of the wide-ranging anthologies and brief texts that focus on a particular theme or topic within one of four areas of applied ethics.  A discount is offered when two or more titles in the series are packaged together. Click on any of the titles below for more information:

Anchor volume

Business Ethics titles

Business, Ethics, and Sustainability:  Ethics for the Next Industrial Revolution

By Joseph DesJardins

© 2007 | ISBN: 013189174X

Journalistic Ethics

By Dale Jacquette
© 2007 | ISBN: 0131825399

Environmental Ethics titles

Medical Ethics titles

Social and Political Philosophy titles

Human Rights and Global Obligations