Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility for Spirituality and Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainable development and ecosystem management commonly involve tough sociopolitical choices and often face a conflict between economic benefits and environmental degradation. This calls for stewardship from both corporate and public policy leaders to protect and preserve our only planet for future generations. People are inherently self-serving. Absent purpose as a moderator, one could easily skew the objective through the inherent bias of self or inner group interest. In the sustainability/environmental arena, unethical behavior often manifests itself in the form of—caring only for people who mimic us, protecting only parts of the eco-system that overtly serve us and of course generating profits only for a subsection of the stakeholders. In this chapter, the authors focus on environmental ethics within sustainability and expand the triple bottom-line context of people, planet, and profit with a fourth component—purpose—to emphasize the power of ethics as a balancing force to preempt the disastrous pitfalls of economics without ethics. ‘Carbon-share’ is introduced in the context of climate change and intergenerational equity, and a red flag raised that “Carbon-share could become the most contentious distributive justice issue globally.” The chapter also highlights the crucial roles of corporate social responsibility and public policy stewardship, presents a framework for ethical decision making, and illustrates how an environmental ethics dilemma is resolved with a case study.

This chapter is primarily based on Taback and Ramanan, Environmental Ethics and Sustainability (Florida: CRC Press, 2014).