Philosophy of Management and Sustainability

Rethinking Business Ethics and Social Responsibility in Sustainable Development

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789734553
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Using an interdisciplinary focus, this book combines the research disciplines of philosophy, business management and sustainability to aid and advance both scholarly and practitioner understanding of sustainability management and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
As businesses and society continue to transition towards further sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, the key challenge faced is in rethinking the philosophy of management and business ethics to achieve this change in deep and lasting ways.
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff explores the philosophical foundations of business ethics, economics and sustainability through four key themes:

• From CSR and business ethics to sustainable development goals (SDGs)
• Philosophy of management and ethical economy of sustainability
• Foundations of philosophy of management, ethics and sustainability
• Responsible management of sustainability.
• In reflecting on the works of philosophers and scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Paul Ricœur, Thomas Pikettyand Peter Koslowski within the context of sustainability, globalization, anthropocene ethics and corporate social responsibility, the book presents a key understanding of the vital philosophical foundations for creating progressive business models in a more sustainable society.

Part I

From CSR and Business Ethics to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Chapter 1

Ethics and Justice in the International World: The Problem of Globalization and the Need for a Cosmopolitan Spirit

Our time is the time of globalization. Today globalization has become a concept that concerns the universalization of languages and cultures in a world that is emerging as “One World” (Rendtorff, 2017).¹ Yet, in the beginning, the concept of globalization has been an economic concept (Brown & Held, 2010). It was a concept that – in the economic and social debate – posed a challenge to the traditional concepts of the economy. In the current situation, the idea of globalization marks the break with a paradigm of the national state and with all its institutions as well as globalization represents the emergence of an international and cosmopolitan system that goes beyond the state system. There are even economists who think that this rupture implies the emergence of a new paradigm of the international economy where we must describe the global interaction rather than the system of the national state. We can say that we should propose a political and economic science that is truly cosmopolitan. In addition, it is up to us to define the content of this new cosmopolitan science of global ethics of sustainability in relation to ethics and international justice (Held, 1995a, 1995b).

Although we started with a narrow state system and an international economy after the Second World War with an economy without many multinational companies, we are now in the situation of a global economy where the market economy with the end of the cold war has become truly international. This is why we need a new theory of international relations, which also raises the problem of sustainability as a problem of ethics and justice at the international level.

In the same way, globalization also poses a challenge to developing economies, being both a threat and a possibility for these countries and cultures. When talking about the countries of the Middle East and Africa and in the area of globalization, it would also be necessary to go beyond the paradigm of the national state. It is necessary to think of the Middle East and Africa in the process of integration in a cosmopolitan system, that is to say, a search for a sustainable Cosmopolis where all cultures meet in a specific country. One aspect of this globalization is the critical relation to companies that can operate anywhere in the world (Rendtorff, 2009). It is globalization with the fatal consequences for the happy life of people in local cultures and countries. One can speak of the accumulation of the circulation of goods and capital, which implies the intensification of poverty in developing countries in the Middle East and Africa.

So, it is a challenge for a philosophy of global globalization to think of justice for the cosmopolitan society that goes beyond the level of the national state (Beck, 2001). In this situation of the globalization of the economy with its potential consequences of the worsening inequality in the world we could say that we are looking for a democracy and publicity at the global level that can take into account the possibilities and limits of economic globalization in relation to political and democratic stability.

It is the political philosophy’s duty to think of this other globalization, not only as a utopia for the world, but also as a realistic and current alternative vision for international society. The dream of another globalization is expressed in the search for international and civil governance structures that can give meaning to globalization and help to manage the free flow of goods and capital. But, it is above all a problem of security and political stability. We need a vision of democratic integration of countries and cultures into the international system. This is the vision not of exclusion, but of the respectful integration of the Middle East and Africa into the processes of globalization that goes beyond military and war conflicts and political instability.

We want to take an attempt to make a critique of globalization from the dream of another globalization that goes beyond poverty and international economic inequality, described by the French economist Thomas Piketty (Piketty, 2014). Based on this problem, this chapter will present a vision of another globalization by discussing globalization in relation to the democratization of national and international governance. It is about proposing a project of philosophy of globalization that is moving toward a cosmopolitan ethical vision of international justice of relations between countries and regions of the world.

1. Toward a Critical Philosophy of Globalization

In his book Power and Counter-Power in the Age of Globalization (2003) and What Is Cosmopolitanism? (2006) Ulrich Beck describes the process of globalization in a way that can help us to offer this vision of a critical philosophy of globalization. We can say that with globalization we are confronted with the ecological, humanitarian, food, and military catastrophes of the world and above all that is why we need a reflexive space where we can confront globalization with a new critical philosophy. At the same time, we see the rise of nationalism in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the United States, and around the world. Therefore, we must go beyond border policy and develop a transnational policy and a vision of a philosophy of globalization that can think of global sustainability and cosmopolitan justice (Beck, 2006).

This philosophy of globalization must study the consequences of globalization and the philosophical dimensions of interconnectedness and the growing institutional interdependence of the world, as proposed by the English professor David Held (Brown & Held, 2010). We should study how globalization expresses a historical transformation of the modern world in which we can observe that what is national is no longer national, but is part of the Cosmopolis as is the case with all the major cities of the world.

Following this, inspired by Ulrich Beck, we can say that cosmopolitanism is a fact of history. Beck calls this a cosmopolitan realism. He defines cosmopolitan realism as follows:

Realism, that is, cosmopolitan Machiavellianism, responds in particular to two questions. First: how and by what strategies do the players in the global economy impose on states the laws of their action? Secondly, how can states, in turn, reclaim a meta-political-political power to impose a cosmopolitan regime on global capital that also includes political freedom, global justice, social protection, and environmental preservation? (Beck, 2003, p. 12)

In other words: How to overcome realism and move toward international justice?

Beck speaks of the need for a new global political economy that includes the space of the transnational economy on one side and the international political world beyond the national state policy on the other side. The need for this cosmopolitan social theory is reflected in the many signs of globalization that Beck describes: “Climate change, environmental destruction, global financial risks, population migration, and the anticipated consequences of nanotechnology and genetic innovations” (Beck, 2003, p. 12). Moreover, we could add other cosmopolitan issues of poverty, inequality and all the problems of neo-colonialism in the world. Beck argues that we will have to overcome the division of the world by the state and culture to find a “cosmopolitan common sense” of accepting otherness that goes beyond ethnic, national, and religious differences to create an international cosmopolitan consciousness.

It is this search for the cosmopolitan spirit that Beck calls the second modernity. In addition, we can add that it is the duty of a new program of philosophical reflection to confront this new cosmopolitan modernity and think about its ethics, politics, and justice (Beck, 2006). Nevertheless, what kind of questions will we have to ask in order to analyze cosmopolitan modernity in a philosophical way? In particular, we can mention the issues of power and struggle for freedom and equality in the world. Moreover, in the present situation the importance of finding a peaceful solution to military conflicts in the Middle East is important to mention.

As a result, Ulrich Beck wonders what are the foundations of legitimate domination in the era of globalization? Both terrorists, local wars and military policy have become international, and the question of perpetual peace is emerging once again with great force. One would think that it is precisely the duty of the new cosmopolitan thought not to end with “The Clash of Civilizations” but, as Beck says, it would be necessary to find a cosmopolitanism according to the great philosopher Immanuel Kant who does not manifest himself in an idealistic sense, but in a realistic sense of cosmopolitanism in common sense (Beck, 2003, p. 17). Such a cosmopolitan Realpolitik must take transnational dependencies seriously and transform and open national democracy to the situation of globalization. We must rethink economics and democracy beyond the national state. The cosmopolitan modernity is particularly confronted with the overflowing national borders caused by the globalization of the economy and it is the duty of the philosophy of globalization to think about the social and cultural consequences of this economic globalization (Beck, 2006).

We can emphasize that the second modernity has proposed a meta-transformation of the economy and the politics of the state (Held & McGrew, 2007). We can talk about the meta-games of world politics. These are institutions and organizations on a global scale that will need to be the subject of philosophical reflection. Globalization expresses a transformation of second-rate modernization beyond the national welfare state. The neoliberal agenda was the liberation of the economy beyond the national state and left an empty space for international governance. Today, one should analyze the consequences and possibilities of action from that. Faced with the upheaval of the world by the free movement of capital Beck proposes “the counter-power of global civil society” (Beck, 2003, p. 33). Among the elements of this civil society, one can think of the political consumer, Beck sees the consumer society as the real world society: “The consumer society is the truly global society” (Beck, 2003, p. 35). Political consumers are a counter-power to the global economic society.

At the same time, we can talk about going beyond the national state toward an international civil society that could be defined as the society of globalization. Beck says, “The counter-power of states develops through the transnationalization and cosmopolitanization of these same states” (Beck, 2003, p. 39). Beck also shows how terrorists as the antithesis of economic globalization are global players. Likewise, the international alliance against terrorists has been international even though it is not very effective. Therefore, from the point of view of this globalization movement, philosophical reflection and social thought about ethics and political justice must provide the frameworks for understanding this internationalization of political and social events and actors who all work at the global and international level (Beck, 2006).

2. Globalization, Misery of the World, and Struggle for Recognition

Thus, it would be necessary to universalize the categories of thought that were more or less limited in the framework of the national state. The themes of critical philosophy should be developed on a world scale in order to understand the global problem of sustainability from the philosophical point of view. For example, Ulrich Beck also shows us how the society of risk has been generalized and globalized in the second modernity and how it has become a category of globalization that requires cosmopolitan governance (Beck, 2006). While the economic risks, even if they have a large collective scope of unemployment and destruction of the economy of the society, remain directed toward individuals, the ecological and climatic risks concern the whole planet. According to Beck, it would be necessary to develop a new conception of the critical theory, which implies that the theory criticizes not from the perspective of nationalization but in particular from the globalization, that is to say a new critical theory of a cosmopolitan point of view. Thus, we can add to Beck that this new theory of globalization must be a cosmopolitan philosophy that develops our notions of democracy and justice at the scale of the globalized risk society.

We can also find the foundation of the need for such philosophical reflection in other social thinkers. Zygmunt Bauman and Anthony Giddens, for example, are two sociologists who take the same starting point as Beck at the same time as they propose a new vision of globalization. In the sociology of Bauman, we find a development of critical and pessimistic ideas present in the reflection on globalization. With Bauman’s notion of the blurring of everything in Liquid Modernity (2000), we could say that we are facing a third globalization that indicates that we are in a fluid world. We are also in a world of multiple liquid; technological fuzziness; transformation of the relationship between private and public, according to Bauman. Globalization is becoming a world without solidity. For example, new information technologies are contributing to this situation. We can mention the problem of speed, which is characterized by the acceleration of possibilities. In addition, the deterritorialization marks this change. In the urban environment, it is a question of finding a way of living and going beyond the liquid living conditions. Moreover, also military instability and terrorism in the Middle East are a recent example of how traditional categories of understanding the world are being dissolved.

According to Bauman in Globalization: The Human Consequences (1998), globalization produces despair and inauthenticity. Vagrants, immigrants, refugees, and tourists can be mentioned as desperate cosmopolites seeking authenticity in their movement in the international space. According to Bauman, globalization is the age of disorientation and loss of cohesion in one’s personal life. In this conception of globalization, it is part of a critical thinking of globalization to find new ways of inhabiting the world in the vagueness of urbanity in the process of globalization. Bauman’s approach is very important as a critical foundation for the need for a critical reflection on globalization that involves a cosmopolitan point of view showing what Bourdieu called “the misery of the world” (Bourdieu, 1993). One could say that the philosophy of globalization must start from social theory with a view to concrete research on domination and social destruction.

Anthony Giddens is more optimistic than Bauman and Bourdieu. He sees the possibility of liberalization of individuals in relation to the domination of tradition. According to Giddens in Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives (1999), the loss of national tradition can be a condition for the democratic emancipation of the individual. It is almost like a kind of enlightenment of the individual that allows reflection and self-liberation. Thus, there is a force for democratization and liberation of the world involved in the concept of globalization. Giddens tells us how the critical philosophy of globalization should not forget the emancipatory potentialities of globalization, while globalization is becoming a condition of possibility for the true liberation of the individual.

We can link this with the reflections of critical philosophy on the theme of recognition. For the American political economist Francis Fukuyama, it can be said that liberal globalization is a phenomenon of the end of history as a struggle between the great political ideologies of Marxism and liberalism. Globalization marks the victory of economic liberalism. Thus, for Fukuyama, the end of history is characterized by a double movement: first the homogenization of liberal society and culture of the West (Fukuyama, 1992). Then, the persistence of peoples and particular cultures in the countries of the world; for example, Islamic culture, the Middle East, and North Africa, the other countries of Africa, and the particular culture of the Asian world that combines economic progress with the traditional values of society.

Thus, the end of history is a strong movement toward the universalization and homogenization of the world. Because of the death of politics in the traditional sense, it is also a movement toward the end of the state as such. At the same time, we see peoples’ awareness of their own identity as perfect peoples. Therefore, the struggle of recognition persists as a historical movement even if the debate is less present in the countries of the West. It is the struggle of recognition as a result of decolonization. Therefore, for Fukuyama, the great challenge of current thinking is the combination of universal development with the emergence of confrontation between increasingly different cultures, that is, in the global battle of recognition we need to find the recognition as equal of different people from different cultures. Therefore, in a stable political society with well-functioning market economic structures, recognition should be combined with trust in people and institutions (Fukuyama, 1995).

In a current reflection, Fukuyama talks about the end of the end of the “Narrative of the West” (Fukuyama, 2016). The future of Western civilization is uncertain. According to Fukuyama, the United States and Europe are in a new political reality with nationalism in Europe, expressed among others by the Brexit and by the rise of the new right with the election of Donald Trump as president in the United States. One can even talk about the rise of society of the “post-factual” politics where disillusioned voters uncritically follow populist politicians. This poses a great challenge to democratic political institutions that had experienced consensual stability after the end of the cold war and ideological struggles against the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. According to Fukuyama, the current development of neoliberal and post-fact society represents a de-institutionalization of the West and this accentuates the post-factual spirit that resembles fluid post-modernity in the sense that there is no longer any objective truth. In particular, trust in political institutions is in decline and it is very dangerous, according to Fukuyama, who emphasizes that the political order depends on legitimate, just, transparent, stable, and democratic political institutions (Fukuyama, 2011, 2014). Nevertheless, with the post-factual society we experience the decline of trust and the emergence of cynicism and opportunism of political actors. Thus, we experience a post-factual modification of the struggle for political power that adds a great deal of complexity to the reflection on ethics and the justice of recognition of cultures on the scale of cosmopolitan society.

In the philosophy of recognition the thinker of the tradition of German critical theory Axel Honneth in Die Kampf um die Anerkennung also emphasizes the struggle for recognition as fundamental in international politics. He emphasizes that recognition in a post-traditional ethic is found through a struggle for the autonomy of freedom. There is a quest for autonomy in the struggle for recognition, which is a way to combat the pathologies, injustices, and alienation of modern society on a global scale. For Hon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I. From CSR and Business Ethics to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Part II. Philosophy of Management and Ethical Economy of Sustainability
• Part III. Foundations of Philosophy of Management, Ethics, and Sustainability
• Part IV. Responsible Management of Sustainability
• References
• Index