We argue that the majority of the current approaches in research on corporate sustainability are inconsistent with the notion of sustainable development. By defining the notion of instrumentality in the context of corporate sustainability through three conceptual principles we show that current approaches are rooted in a bounded notion of instrumentality which establishes a systematic a priori predominance of economic organizational outcomes over environmental and social aspects. We propose an inclusive notion of profitability that reflects the return on all forms (...) of environmental, social, and economic capital used by a firm. This inclusive notion of corporate profitability helps to redefine corporate profitability as if sustainability matters in that it overcomes the bounded instrumentality that impairs current research on corporate sustainability. We apply this notion to different car manufacturers and develop conceptual implications for future research on corporate sustainability. (shrink)

An in-depth analysis of earlier work for sustainable development has revealed that well-intentioned and rigorous efforts globally towards achieving sustainability have at best achieved marginal results. The problem appears to be certain inherent contradictions within the contemporary paradigm of development. The article explores these unaddressed contradictions and argues that the present model of development is fundamentally incapable of resolving the prevalent problems of contemporary times. Hence, a strong need is felt to relook at sustainability more fundamentally and work towards a (...) paradigm shift. Such a shift in the paradigm of development would put emphasis on sustainable consumption—a shift from sense gratification to actual human happiness and from treating nature as a resource for consumption to appreciating the inherent balance based on interconnectedness in nature. (shrink)

Under one of the last remaining single-party communist regimes, Vietnam’s in-progress transition is a hybrid between post-Soviet reforms and Chinese authoritarian compromise. This chapter provides a brief account of the historical events and cultural attributes that have shaped the current political and economic configuration of the country, a coverage of globalization and entrepreneurial endeavours in relation to trade liberalization, an analysis of growing consumerist tendencies and the solidification of a circle of economic elites, an overview of Vietnamese foreign trade, with (...) a focus on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China as significant partners, and a macroeconomic assessment of the country. (shrink)

The world’s current model for economic development is unsustainable. It encourages high levels of resource extraction, consumption, and waste that undermine positive environmental outcomes. Transitioning to a circular economy (CE) model of development has been proposed as a sustainable alternative. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a crucial enabler for CE. It can aid in designing robust and sustainable products, facilitate new circular business models, and support the broader infrastructures needed to scale circularity. However, to date, considerations of the ethical implications of (...) using AI to achieve a transition to CE have been limited. This article addresses this gap. It outlines how AI is and can be used to transition towards CE, analyzes the ethical risks associated with using AI for this purpose, and supports some recommendations to policymakers and industry on how to minimise these risks. (shrink)

According to some philosophers and social scientists, mainstream economic theories currently play an unprecedented role in shaping human societies. This phenomenon can be linked to the dissemination of methodological individualism, where common goods are interpreted as reducible to aggregates of individuals' well-being. Nonetheless, some emergent difficulties of economics in coping with global institutional issues have encouraged some authors to revise that paradigm. In the last three decades, there has been a parallel growing philosophical interest in investigating social sciences' epistemological and (...) ontological foundations. Unfortunately, these two research trends have often not communicated systematically enough to understand the specific ontology of collective aims. It is still unclear whether some irreducible social goods exist and how the answer to this question can set up a consistent understanding of cooperative actions. This dissertation addresses this issue, drawing on philosophical investigations about collective intentionality. It claims that a coherent ontological taxonomy of irreducible and reducible social goods is theoretically viable and can reframe prevailing approaches to collective action dilemmas influenced by the traditional economic categorisation of goods. The research begins by analysing how the influential theory of public goods has paved the way for some social and moral impasses. Furthermore, some theoretical proposals suggesting the existence of relational goods and common-pool resources are scrutinised. Hence, a refutation of the ontological reduction of all social goods to individual ones is developed, arguing that a specific form of cooperation, grounded in we-intentions and we-reasoning, shows the plausibility of the existence of some kinds of irreducible collective goods. Expanding on that view, a refinement of this categorisation of social goods is put forward by underlying the function of some relational entities, such as trust and shared sensemaking processes, in making cooperation robust in uncertain environments. Finally, by applying the taxonomy to collective action gridlocks regarding climate change, digital information, and public education, the consistency of this hypothesis is tested, showing that a pluralistic ontological account of social goods might improve the moral understanding of current social dilemmas. (shrink)

İklim değişikliğini azaltma politikaları bağlamında, Türkiye’de rüzgâr enerjisi gelişiminin kırsal topluluklar açısından sürdürülebilir olup olmadığı yerel ve ulusal politika gündeminin önemli konularından biri olmalıdır. Bu bağlamda bu çalışma, Çanakkale’deki Rüzgâr Enerjisi Santrallerinin (RES) yakınındaki kırsal toplulukların çevresel ve sosyal sürdürülebilirliğini nasıl etkilediğine odaklanmaktadır. Çevresel sürdürülebilirlik temiz enerji ve orman, biyo-çeşitlilik ve habitat üzerindeki etki; sosyal sürdürülebilirlik ise sosyal katılım, sosyal adalet ve eşitlik ve topluluğun yaşam kalitesi, yaşam alanları çerçevesinde değerlendirilmektedir. Çalışmanın verileri, nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden durum çalışması deseninden yararlanılarak elde (...) edilmiştir. Araştırmanın örneklemini, Çanakkale’deki RES şirket çalışanları ve kurulum alanlarındaki yerel aktörler oluşturmaktadır. Ocak-Mart 2023 tarihleri arasında gerçekleştirilen görüşmelerde bölge halkı, yerel paydaşlar ve RES şirketleri için üç ayrı yarı yapılandırılmış mülakat formu kullanılmıştır. Araştırmada bölge halkından 47, yerel paydaşlardan 7 ve RES şirket çalışanlarından 2 kişi olmak üzere toplamda 56 kişi (18 kadın, 38 erkek) ile görüşülerek veriler toplanmıştır. Veriler, MAXQDA programında temalara ayrılarak kodlanmış ve analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma bulgularına göre, Çanakkale kırsalında RES’ler, temiz enerji oluşuyla çevreyle uyumlu ve çevresel sürdürülebilirliğe katkı sağlarken; ormansızlaşma, biyo-çeşitlilik ve habitat üzerinde baskı oluşturmasıyla çevresel sürdürülebilirliği tehdit etmektedir. RES’ler, kurulum aşamasındaki planlama sürecine bölge halkının sosyal katılımı (Çevresel Etki Değerlendirmesi-ÇED- ve alternatif mekanizmalar) ve köylerin ortak kullanım alanlarının iyileştirilmesi için (okul, yol, cami, altyapı hizmetleri vb.) yapılan sosyal destekler ile sosyal adalete, eşitliğe ve sürdürülebilirliğe katkı sağlamaya çalışmaktadır. Bununla birlikte RES’ler, kurulum alanlarıyla ilişkili olarak gürültü, sağlık ile ilgili endişeler gibi etkileriyle bölge halkının yaşam kalitesinin düşmesine ve arazi kullanımının değişmesiyle sosyal yaşam alanlarının (tarım, mera, piknik, gezinti, manzaralı yerlerin azalması vb.) kısmi olarak sınırlanmasına yol açarak sosyal sürdürülebilirlik üzerinde baskı oluşturmaktadır. Netice olarak Çanakkale kırsalında RES’lerin çevresel ve sosyal sürdürülebilirliğe hem katkı sağlayan hem baskı oluşturan iki yönlü bir karaktere sahip olduğu anlaşılmaktadır. (shrink)

The emerging field of responsible management (RM) studies the integration of sustainability, responsibility, and ethics in managerial practices. Therefore, turning to practice theories for the study of RM appears to hold great promise of conceptual and methodological contribution. We propose a posthumanist practice approach for studying RM-as-practice. Managerial practices are conceived as the agencement of heterogeneous elements (humans, nonhumans, more-than-humans, materials, and discourses) that achieve agency in their being interconnected. Thus, RM is understood as processual, relational, emergent, and sociomaterial. We (...) contribute a framework for the empirical study of RM-as-practice on the basis of three sensitizing concepts: situatedness, sociomateriality, and textures_._ We further discuss the implications of understanding responsibility as response-ability, an engaged practice for relating to the other and the RM researcher’s role as internal to the practice agencement under study, thus, opening the debate on our own response-ability. (shrink)

The term Sustainable Development has been used in many different contexts and consequently has come to represent many different ideas. The purpose of this paper was to explore the underlying meaning of the term Sustainable Development, and to assess the dominant ethic behind such meaning. Through this exploration, we uncovered a change in the semantic meaning of the term, and described what that meaning entails. The term Sustainable Development had the potential, we argue, to stimulate discursive engagement with respect to (...) the future development of society within an ethical framework based around the values of inclusivity, diversity, and integration. The importance of philosophical context within which the term is used influences the definitional process of meaning, and has been simulated into the language of the dominant scientific-economic paradigm. We go on to explore how this meaning change has come about. In doing so we looked to the Enlightenment period and the resulting philosophies to explore the foundations of meaning, and then to the work of Jürgen Habermas to explain how the scientific-economic paradigm came to dominate the meaning of Sustainable Development. (shrink)

Prior research on sustainability in business often assumes that decisions on social and environmental investments are made for instrumental reasons, which points to causal relationships between corporate financial performance and corporate social and environmental commitment. In other words, social or environmental commitment should predict higher financial performance. The theoretical premise of sustainability, however, is based on a systems perspective, which implies a tighter integration between corporate financial performance and corporate commitment to social and environmental issues. In this paper, we describe (...) the important theoretical differences between an instrumental and integrative logic in managing business sustainability. We test the presence of each logic using data from 738 firms over 13 years and find evidence of integrative logic applied in business. (shrink)

This paper presents a systematic discussion, mainly for non-economists, on economic approaches to the concept of sustainable development. As a first step, the concept of sustainability is extensively discussed. As a second step, the argument that it is not possible to consider sustainability only from an economic or ecological point of view is defended; issues such as economic-ecological integration, inter-generational and intra-generational equity are considered of fundamental importance. Two different economic approaches to environmental issues, i.e. neo-classical environmental economics and ecological (...) economics, are compared. Some key differences such as weak versus strong sustainability, commensurability versus incommensurability and ethical neutrality versus different values acceptance are pointed out. (shrink)

This paper reviews the current status of the debate about concept of environmental sustainability, and mentions its related aspects of growth, limits, scale and substitutability. The paper suggests that ES is a clear concept and that it is universal and rigorous. While the many paths leading to ES in each country or sector will differ, the goal remains constant. ES is contrasted from social and economic sustainability, because the three types of sustainability follow different laws and require different means by (...) different disciplines to achieve each of them. ES is fundamental for survival of humanity; but ES without some measure of social sustainability will not be very attractive. The three now need to be integrated.This conceptualisation is far from an academic exercise. The monumental challenge of ensuring that possibly ten billion people are decently fed and housed within less than two human generations—without damaging the environment on which we all depend—means that the goal of environmental sustainability must be reached as soon as humanly possible. (shrink)

We argue the need for academics to resist and challenge the hegemonic discourse of sustainable development within the corporate context. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory provides a useful framework for recognizing the complex nature of sustainable development and a way of conceptualizing counter-hegemonies. Published empirical research that analyzes sustainable development discourse within corporate reports is examined to consider how the hegemonic discourse is constructed. Embedded assumptions within the hegemonic construction are identified including sustainable development as primarily about economic development, progress, (...) growth, profitability, and “responsibly” managed levels of resource depletion. We call for multiple voices in the discursive field to debate and to resist closure and highlight the possibilities for academic researchers to actively resist the hegemonic construction. Specifically, we advocate vigilance and awareness, critical and reflective analyses, challenge and resistance based on other frames of reference, and strategies for communicating both within and outside the academy. (shrink)