A moral case for sustainability
3 reasons why businesses must ensure they respect our rights to raise healthy families and protect our children
Fairness: We all have the right to a healthy family and safe planet
Our perspective is that moral positions based on the tenet of fairness have powerful potential to serve as foundational business beliefs. One of the most basic fairness positions that has appeal across political tribes is the idea that your business choices shouldn’t infringe upon the rights of others to have a healthy family and safe planet. Businesses who use more than their fair share of natural resources are violating the rights of individuals and other businesses. As a business leader, this means you have a duty to ensure that you have an accurate accounting of the shared resources you use, a clear commitment to efficient resources use, and plans for protecting the current and future availability of resources for others.
Care: We have a duty to care for vulnerable people and protect them from harm
Children and our elders are the most vulnerable to harms related from pollution, climate change, and human rights exploitation and we must protect them. Businesses must ensure they respect our right to raise healthy families and protect our children from the harm caused by their contribution to planetary chaos. As a business leader, your ethical obligation is to take reasonable steps to ensure that aspects of your operations and products that are under your direct control do not harm vulnerable members of society. For aspects of your business beyond your direct control, you have the responsibility to conduct reasonable due diligence on the practices of the organizations you do business with. And then embed care and protection-related provisions in your policies and contracts.
Purity: Our families rely on unpolluted air, water, land, and food to survive
An ethical commitment to ensuring that all life is sacred in business means that everyone should have the right to have clean air, water, and safe products. The purity of our air, land, and water must be protected against the kind of pollution that violates our health. As a business leader you are responsible for ensuring that your operations and the operations of the businesses in your value chain are not violating these rights. People shouldn’t have to drink polluted water or breathe bad air because of where they were born or their family’s resources. Consumers have the right to hold companies accountable for the damage they do to our planet.
A moral imperative as a prerequisite for authentic sustainability
Without a sense of moral responsibility to conduct business in an ethical fashion, authentic sustainability (i.e. context-based with fair allocations) will never be possible. We believe there are at least two reasons:
People are not rational decision makers.
The data, financials, reduction estimates only matter once we try and justify our initial decision. Our behavior is driven by emotional forces linked to our sense of morality.
The “business case” can only take us so far.
What happens when the return on investment is negative? The nature and extent of investment necessary to transform the way we meet our material needs will not always be financially beneficial for businesses and economies. Revenue may decrease. Margins may get smaller. Costs will go up. Growth will slow or stop. Negative financial impacts are an acute reality for industries and businesses that create large external impacts and have failed to invest in transitioning their operations.
Part of a comprehensive transformation strategy
If you’re trying to accelerate your ethical business practices or sustainability performance in your business, using moral or ethical arguments to drive behavior change and influence decision-making in your business can be a powerful tool. But it shouldn’t be the only one in the toolbox. When financial arguments make sense, use them in tandem. Behavioral science research shows that when multiple strategies or levers are used in combination they are more effective and changing behavior. Importantly, the strategies used should be specific to the audience and organizational context of your business. What works for one type of person may not be as effective, or could even backfire, for a different kind of person. Learn more about behavior change levers here.
Sources
The following authors and articles helped inform the basis for this post.
Abramovich, N., & Vasiliu, A. (2023). Sustainability as fairness: A Rawlsian framework linking intergenerational equity and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) with business practices. Sustainable Development, 31(3), 1328-1342.
Eisele, O., Brugman, B. C., & Marschlich, S. (2024). The moral foundations of responsible business: Using computational text analysis to explore the salience of morality in CSR communication. Public Relations Review, 50(2), 102453.
Fioravante, R. (2024). Beyond the Business Case for Responsible Artificial Intelligence: Strategic CSR in Light of Digital Washing and the Moral Human Argument. Sustainability, 16(3), 1232. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16031232
Ha-Brookshire, J. (2017). Toward moral responsibility theories of corporate sustainability and sustainable supply chain. Journal of Business Ethics, 145(2), 227-237.
Strimling, P., Vartanova, I., Jansson, F., & Eriksson, K. (2019). The connection between moral positions and moral arguments drives opinion change. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(9), 922-930.
Torelli, R. (2021). Sustainability, responsibility and ethics: different concepts for a single path. Social Responsibility Journal, 17(5), 719-739.