Globalization and Corporate Citizenship: The Alternative Gaze

A Collection of Seminal Essays

Malcolm McIntosh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781783534968
• eBook ISBN: 9781351284226
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The theory and practice of corporate citizenship and CSR have many alternative perspectives to the business-as-usual gaze. The essays in this volume encapsulate the essence of these alternative ideas and embrace the idea that progressive ways and means of this century do not lie in mainstream capitalist thinking. These pieces ask critical questions about the way we see the relationship between capitalism, business models and society – a subject not often discussed in non-academic literature. Globalization and Corporate Citizenship: The Alternative Gaze features contributions and new analysis from Klaus M. Leisinger, Chris Laszlo, David Coopperrider, Simon Zadek, Sandra Waddock and others.

This title is one of a two-volume set – a collection of seminal and thought-provoking essays, drawn from the Journal of Corporate Citizenship's archive, accompanied by new analysis and reflection from the original authors. Written by some of the most widely recognized academic and business pioneers and leaders of the corporate responsibility and global sustainability movement, the volumes make essential reference texts for anyone interested in the radically awakening new global political economy.

Systems, feminisation and the new political economy

8
Flourishing

A Vision for Business and the World¹

Chris Laszlo, Judy Sorum Brown, Dave Sherman, Ilma Barros, Brodie Boland, John Ehrenfeld, Mary Gorham, Linda Robson, Roger Saillant and Paul Werder

THIS PAPER CONNECTS EMERGING CONCEPTS of flourishing at the individual and organisational level with flourishing at the systems level. Aimed at business practitioners, its purpose is to reframe sustainability from doing less harm to prosperity and flourishing² and to propose ways to engage the whole human being in helping business to create what has been called sustainable or shared value (Hart et al. 2003). Our central idea is that flourishing individuals are essential for business to create value for stakeholders in ways that are meaningful for them while creating even more value for shareholders;³ and that spirituality, which we define below, is a key missing ingredient in this effort.

Creating value for society and the environment as a strategy to drive business innovation and increased value for customers and shareholders requires a new orientation, one that recognises the importance of flourishing at all levels to align world and business interests. It is about cooperation, collaborative innovation and the co-creation of a desired future; and it contrasts sharply with a win/lose orientation around competition and winning at the expense of others. The goal is to take the intersection of positive psychology and corporate sustainability to a whole new level by emphasising individual flourishing centred on spiritual well-being.

Although much work exists on flourishing at each of the three levels (individual, organisation, system), very little has been done to present an integrated view for business. Corporate sustainability efforts—which point to the link between organisational and systems flourishing—have largely ignored the spiritual dimension. Work on individual flourishing has addressed the spiritual dimension in producing outcomes such as a sense of calling and group membership, which in turn have been connected to greater organisational effectiveness (Fry 2003), yet only limited mention has been made of its role in fostering sustainability (Stead and Stead 2010).

Organisational development (OD) has long focused on organisational effectiveness (Cummings and Worley 2009) and humanistic values (Yaeger and Sorensen 2008) but rarely on global issues. The field of positive psychology from Maslow (1943, 1976) to Seligman (2002, 2012) has similarly sought to unleash the human potential with the goal of increasing positive emotion, engagement, meaning, positive relationships and accomplishment, yet without giving much attention to flourishing at the global level. The same can be said for advances at the intersection of neuroscience and leadership, which focus on new ways to cultivate high engagement, creativity and resilience of individuals and teams (Goleman et al. 2002; Boyatzis and McKee 2005). Meanwhile, corporate strategy and leadership have evolved to address global environmental and social issues as profit opportunities (Porter and Kramer 2006; Hart 2007; Senge et al. 2008; Laszlo and Zhexembayeva 2011) but largely ignored individual flourishing as a factor in realising such opportunities.

In this paper, we argue that enabling individuals to flourish in more than material or economic terms, and specifically in spiritual terms, is becoming a critical challenge for any organisation aiming to succeed in complex business environments that increasingly require it to innovate and act in service of its stakeholders. The challenge is critical not only for business to achieve prosperity in tough times but also to tackle global challenges from climate stability to food security, biodiversity, water and social justice. Current attempts by business to address many of these issues are falling short and may unintentionally only delay the demise of an already broken system (McDonough and Braungart 1998). The business rationale for embedding sustainability remains vital and, as eloquently argued elsewhere (Paine 2003), when coupled with the case for behaving responsibly can create a virtuous cycle of value for business and for society. But the traditional approach to making the business and ethical case is no longer enough. For those who believe that a radically different approach is needed for business to become an agent of world benefit, we propose a renewed focus on individual flourishing centred on spiritual well-being. We suggest that such a focus be a primary task of management seeking to embed sustainability for business and world gain.

Motivation for our work

In 2011–2013, six Distinguished Fellows at the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value undertook a multiyear project to explore the role of spirituality as a key factor in helping businesses thrive in service of a prosperous and sustainable world. Working in partnership with the Fowler Center staff, our team of ten saw this as a vision that might summon yet unknown talents and energies toward the equivalent of building a cathedral (Saillant 2004).

Our exploration was inspired by several shared beliefs. The first was that we needed to uncover a stronger pull—a more compelling motivation—for pursuing flourishing than what is currently experienced in most business sustainability efforts. We observed that sustainability, when driven primarily by the quest for competitive advantage, seemed to be running out of steam. In every sector, companies making the business case for sustainability were falling short both in terms of the financial returns expected by investors and in providing the solutions to global challenges demanded by stakeholders (MIT Sloan Management Review/Boston Consulting Group 2011).⁴ While hopes were high, and champions were working hard, results were overall disappointing.

The second belief was that business efforts to make sustainability central to a company in a meaningful way depended on long-term vision, far longer than the CEO’s 3–5 year horizon or the strategist’s 7 year plan or even the policy-maker’s 15–50 year window but, rather, the kind of vision that it took to build cathedrals: a line of sight to a 150 year ‘attractor’, from which all the important business designs, decisions and actions could spring.

The third was that a sense of connection—to one’s own life purpose, to others and to the natural world—was essential to what it means to be human. It was essential to the commitment to flourishing and to unlocking our full potential both individually and collectively. Yet that awareness had been lost or severely diminished over the years. We sought to understand how that loss of connection contributes to the difficulty that business people faced in consistently taking actions that support prosperity and flourishing.

Our hypothesis was that this quality of connectedness is essential for business to thrive in an increasingly complex and interconnected world and to truly embrace sustainability. Factors other than spirituality are at play in producing a sense of flourishing, such as physical health, emotional well-being and work–life synergy, but it was that sense of connectedness based on reflective experiences which enabled individuals to engage in qualitatively more powerful ways of thinking and acting aimed at flourishing.

Within the Fellows group, there were different views on what produces such a sense of connectedness and what leads to the kind of wisdom that allows us to live in harmony with others and with the world around us. We identified two basic paths, often seen as mutually exclusive and reflecting a duality present in broader society and even among the world’s spiritual traditions. These two paths can be characterised as transcendent or immanent. The transcendent path results from recognition of the existence of a transcendent force or being, a divine and sacred source that for many people is God, experienced through an epiphany or experience of the non-material world (Smith 2003; Lent 2010). The path of immanence is rooted in an appreciation of the oneness and interconnectedness of the world around us. The notion of immanence positions the spiritual dimension as being evident in the material dimension, so that spiritual meaning and experience are ever present within and around us (Smith 2003; Lent 2010). The Kentucky farmer-poet Wendell Berry captured the essence of the immanent path in his poem The Peace of Wild Things.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The goal of our work can be thus restated as exploring the dynamic and complementary relationship between connectedness and individual flourishing, in the context of business and global sustainability, as supported by both transcendent and immanent metaphysical models of the world. We see these models as offering complementary paths to reflective experiences that we posit are essential for business to thrive in service of both prosperity and a flourishing world.

In summary, our goal was to explore the idea that it is only through becoming more connected to ourselves, others and the natural world that we can build the necessary foundations for caring, thinking, acting and innovating in ways that enable business organisations to operate from a platform that serves business, society and nature. We believe that when we are individually and collectively conscious of our place as a node in a vast and interconnected world, when we are able to experience feelings of purpose and harmony with all that is, only then are we able to undertake intentional actions that habitually incorporate a sense of responsibility to others and to future generations.

Why individual flourishing is essential to embedding sustainability in business

Our collective work with executives across a wide range of companies and business systems led us to observe that sustainability initiatives are typically begun outside of the core strategy and business planning processes and, with the exception of efficiency efforts, become increasingly difficult to embed into the culture, routines and strategy, reflecting the real world challenges of pursuing sustainability initiatives over the long term. Mirroring our observation were surveys of the business community in dozens of countries which showed a large gap between expectations (which were high) and financial results (which were often low) for companies pursuing sustainability initiatives (MIT Sloan Management Review/Boston Consulting Group 2011). Meanwhile, key global indicators suggested that, at best, the world is becoming less sustainable and, at worst, it is heading toward major crises. Progress toward the Millennium Development Goals is mixed (United Nations 2011). Poverty and the gap between the rich and the poor are growing even within high-income countries; progress toward improving maternal health and reducing child mortality is failing in many parts of the world. Efforts to be less environmentally unsustainable, as measured by reversing forest loss or reducing the proportion of the population without access to clean drinking water, are faltering in many regions. In light of these outcomes, to claim that business as an institution was materially contributing to a more sustainable world seemed increasingly far-fetched.

The idea of leveraging individual flourishing is not in itself remarkable. Many theories of leadership and human behaviour are based on the affective states; that is, the moods and emotions of the people involved (Heidegger 1962; Maturana and Varela 1980). Our contribution is to suggest that a range of reflective practices, which some may categorise as spiritual, can facilitate the emergence of individual aspirations which are critical for business to embed sustainability. At the heart of these reflective practices is the creation of a consciousness of connectedness between the world of human beings and all other forms of life and an emerging capability to tap into deeper wisdom and creative insight absent without such practices.

Flourishing individuals and organisations go beyond the limited paradigms of incentives, and beyond the usual attempts at employee engagement and positive cultures. They are able to tap into something much more profound, powerful and even ineffable. They unleash the human spirit. And the challenge of doing exactly that will need to be met by increasing numbers of businesses in the years ahead.

Putting the spiritual dimension into a common language for business

In talking about spirituality with business people, finding the right words becomes a challenge. Despite the proliferation of literature and interest in the topic (Cooperrider and Dutton 1999; Cooperrider 2012),⁵ there is little consensus over the definition of spirituality in the work...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• The ongoing corporate citizenship debate
• Systems, feminisation and the new political economy
• About the editor