Week 2
MGF 5020
Business ethics and
sustainability and the UN
Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs): Innovations &
integration of the United
Nations SDGs
Learning Objective
• Integration of the SDGS as the responsible business practice
• Sustainable development and social transformation- Moving towards a
rights-based approach and capability development
- - The SDGs and social choice
• Civil Society and partnerships for the SDGs-- The SDGs and social choice
• The Challenge of the SDG and integrity of business and politics
Integration of the
SDGS as the
responsible
business practice
Concern for
Sustainability: a key
goal for business
ethics?
The Concept of an
Ethical Economy
And the SDGs as a
social choice & policy
4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LggTrGMygFY
According to Amartya Sen (2009), reaching a reasoned
agreement on an ideal state is immensely difficult. But we
need to know - how to make the word less unjust [pp.95-
102]. [ Will discuss
from 2-11]
Legitimacy -The argument that embedding sustainability can
create legitimacy for business firms
Definitions: Sustainability and sustainable development
❑ A sustainable corporation is one that aims at increasing long-term
shareholder value by integrating economic, environmental and social
growth opportunities into its corporate and business strategies (Dow
Jones Sustainability Group Index, 2010, cited in Banerjee, 2011 ).
❑ According to Haugh and Talwar (2010: 385), social sustainability covers
problems such as poverty, income inequality, disease, access to health
care and sanitation, education and "broader problems associated with the
impact of globalization on economic development."
5
How Do Corporations Embed Sustainability
Across the Organization? Banerjee (2011).
Economic sustainability has dominated research in the business disciplines. On
the other hand, social and environmental issues remain very much peripheral
research topics in management.[…] The dominant view is that businesses can profit
from sustainability while solving the social and environmental problems of the world.
Thus, business firms can "serve the world's poor profitably" (Prahalad & Hammond,
2002, Banerjee, 2011) .
6• The approach to sustainability and business ethics is based on a comprehensive theory of
responsibility, ethics, and legitimacy of corporations in the context of sustainability a globalized
society (De George, 1999; Rendtorff, 2009, 2018, 2020 p19).
An approach to understanding ethics and sustainable business ethics also implies a critical evaluation
of efficiency and utility discourse and activities [ analyses of empirical evidence]. And it leads to a
broader interdisciplinary, institutional, and historical perspective on the norms and values of
corporations.
We understand what indeed implies sustainable
development for all; our considerations are economic,
political and cultural.
Cause and effect analyses and categorization :
Population Growth
Poverty
Pollution
Climate Change
Depletion of resource
Loss of Biodiversity
Energy Security
Brundtland report 1987 for sustainable
Development and sustainability
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Zf-_Ls0L8
Sustainable development was defined in the World Commission on
Environment and Development's 1987 Brundtland report ´Our Common
Future` as 'development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs’.
At the same time, the definition has been countered by Nobel Laureate
Amartya Sen [ will be discussed in detail in week 2, 4 & 9]
Sustainability is a complex
and contested concept, too.
8Situated concerns for business’s responsibility: Sustainable
Development from the perspectives of rights and
responsibility
‘[…] because your business will see benefits on its bottom
line. You will see direct benefits, such as protecting
investment and reducing risk. And you will make less
tangible, but no less important, gains in assets such as
reputation and customer loyalty. In fact, there is a happy
convergence between what your shareholders pay you for, and
what is best for millions of people the world over’. - Kofi Annan
2001
•To whom is the
corporation
responsible?
•What is the
relationship between
business,
government and
society?

John Elkington wrote the book Cannibals with Forks where
he defined the triple bottom line focusing on people, the
planet, and profit as an essential development of
the UN sustainability framework (Elkington, 1999).
CSR/CSV N The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
otion of globalisation becomes evident
Notions of
globalisation
Relocation of
industrialisation
Value extraction from the
natural resources
Value extraction cheap
source of labour
Value creation: economic
equality
Contextual conditions of emergence
discussion on CSR
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower
Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for
Development
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest
gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN
Millennium Declaration
9
Translated as sustainable development goals
(SDGs)
Packaged as social responsibility of business
SDGs
+ GOAL 1: NO POVERTY
+ GOAL 2: ZERO HUNGER
+ GOAL 3: GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-
BEING
+ GOAL 4: QUALITY EDUCATION
+ GOAL 5: GENDER EQUALITY
+ GOAL 6: CLEAN WATER AND
SANITATION
+ GOAL 7: AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN
ENERGY
+ GOAL 8: DECENT WORK AND
ECONOMIC GROWTH
GOAL 9: INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
GOAL 11: SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES
GOAL 12: RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND
PRODUCTION
GOAL 13: CLIMATE ACTION
GOAL 14: LIFE BELOW WATER
GOAL 15: LIFE ON LAND
GOAL 16: PEACE, JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS
GOAL 17: PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS
Stakeholders and value creation
13
Freeman (2017) Profits Are not the Purpose of Business
Freeman’sBusiness Ethics: How
responsible capitalism works
❖ Value creation
❖ Sustainable value creation
❖ Ethical value creation
The New Story of Business: Towards a More Responsible
Capitalism. Business & Society
Freeman suggests to take broader view of
responsibility of business towards multiple
stakeholders.
The New Story of Business: Towards a More Responsible Capitalism
Freeman, 2017
Conscious Capitalism -Michael Porter and a colleague have
suggested that companies focus on “shared value” CSV- where
economic value and social value are entangled . Example:
Nestle
Creative Capitalism, whereby companies focus is on
public welfare. Gates Foundation
How companies can simultaneously create value for all of its
key stakeholders?
To say broadly that business and society need
each other might seem like a cliché, but it is also
the basic truth that will pull companies out of the
muddle that their current corporate-responsibility
thinking has created.’
Porter and Kramer argued for CSV
CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP: TOWARD AN EXTENDED
THEORETICAL CONCEPTUALIZATION ( Matten & Crane ,2005)
+ Corporate citizenship (CC) – the notion emerged because
business has to display social role
+ This is a new concept in 2005, because ….
+Corporate citizenship has become an integral part of every
decision and action we take. We believe corporate citizenship is
demonstrated in who we are as a company, how we conduct our
business and how we take care of our employees, as well as in how
we interact with the world at large.“- Ford
+Our vision is to be an innovative and inspirational global citizen in a
world where our company participates. Every day we drive
responsible business practices that contribute to profitable and
sustainable growth. Nike
Global constituency
+ Liberal Citizenship. the State. and
Globalization
+ The central characteristic of globalization -is
the progressive deterritorialization of social,
political, and economic interaction
+ Seems "corporations" and "citizen ship"
come together in modern society at the
point where the state ceases to be the only
guarantor of citizenship.
+ Deregulations –
economic globalization
The Concept of Global
Constituency
The term global constituency refers
to the political and ethical
recognition that individuals,
regardless of nationality, are part of
a larger decision-making process
that affects them. It extends the
idea of citizenship beyond national
borders, acknowledging that people
have both the right and
responsibility to participate in
shaping ethical business practices
Weekly Learning Objective 2 Civil
Society and Partnerships for the
SDGs
The SDGs & social choice
Responses to Market Failure
Global civil regulation—
Business and NGOs: why collaborate?
Globalization and civil society
organisations
+ Globalization reshaping relations between corporations and CSOs:
Engagement with overseas CSOs
Global issues and causes
Globalization of CSOs
Fostering participation and democracy
Civil society organizations &diversity in CSO characteristics
Activities
Academic research
Market research
Policy research
Information provision
Campaigning
Protests & demos
Boycott co-ordination
Scope
Individual
Grass-roots
Local
Regional
National
Transnational
Global
Focus
Natural environment
Social issues
Development
Poverty alleviation
Human rights
Animal welfare
Structure
Informal
Formal
Co-operative
Professional
Entrepreneurial
Network
Type
Community group
Campaign group
Research organization
Business association
Religious group
Trade union
Technical body
CSOs
Source: adapted from McIntosh and Thomas (2002: 31)
Civil society: wide variety of disparate actors promoting different issues
Business may take account of these different issues simultaneously.: social partnerships
Limitations of business-CSO collaboration
hostility and/or power imbalances between the ‘partners’
CSO independence
Rights-based approach and the SDGS
SocialSDG as a Social choice policy
responsibility of business
and transformative
changes
27
The right-based approach talks about the development of
individuals and all as they aspire for ;
Hence develop and flourish according to their own norms and
desires.
International Development, 37 (2): 54-60.
Rights based approach of theory of
rights of Amartya Sen.
This perspective focuses on
-Capability
-Identity because of recognition, to be
entitled, and to represent
- Identity is linked with political, social,
and economic entitlements
Enactment of rights Right to access
opportunities
,
20
Rights-based approach is linked with the issues of
equity- recognition and thereby, Justice
Amartya Sen suggests these
are all connected to
encountering inequality in
terms of capability.
Amartya Sen- Development as Freedom -1999
Argued that the notion of rights is not clear; is it something that must be provided or
something that cannot be taken away?
Rather than focus on rights, governments should be concerned with the concrete
capabilities of their citizens
Development of capability of an individual are matters of his/her basic human rights.
The right to fully function and flourish, to develop the capacity of individuals and
communities - built on explicit ethical principles that promote dignity (deontology) and
equality (justice)
Sen’s capabilities approach focuses on positive freedom, a person's actual ability to be or
do something, rather than on negative freedom approaches
Rights are materialised through (i) recognition and (ii) representation (discourse ethics)
25
+ The right to fully function and flourish, to develop the capacity of
individuals and communities - built on explicit ethical principles
that promote dignity (deontology) and equality (justice)
+ Sen’s capabilities approach focuses on positive freedom, a
person's actual ability to be or do something, rather than on
negative freedom approaches
+ Rights are materialised through (i) recognition and (ii)
representation (discourse ethics
22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BunGwSCuksE
.49-4.00
Sustainable development goals and social choice for social transformation by
moving towards a rights-based approach and capability development
According to Sen, the subject of social justice was discussed by Aristotle in the fourth century BC
with great reach and clarity, particularly in Nicomachean Ethics.
During the European Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The focus was on
“transcendental institutionalism- perfection; transcendental institutionalism concentrates primarily on
getting the institutions right.
Sen suggests that the social choice theory is deeply concerned with the following:
-Relational since the rational basis of social judgments based on of public decisions in
choosing between social alternative
1. Social states and societal realizations- Realization of justice in the sense not as a matter of
rules and norms, or based on what societies/ communities place its value
2. Focus is the practical reason behind what is to be done
3. Surviving plurality of competing principles Social choice theory has given considerable
recognition to the plurality of reasons
4. The Challenge of the SDG and integrity
of business and politics
+ The notion of sustainability interacts and is entangled with the idea of integrity.
+ Integrity characterizes the development of the concept beyond
+ individuals, going further.
+ Into society and nature.
+ Environmental integrity refers to the coherence and wholeness
+ of living beings and ecosystems.
Integrity in business and politics.
The discursive mechanism in relation to politics of
rights has often obscured the need to specify who
bears the counterpart obligations to deliver on those
rights
consistent and systematic way, the question: “Who must
do what for whom?”3
This task must be understood in historical context
Value thinking competencies
System-thinking
competencies
The rights-based approach provides clarity in
formulating the distributional questions
According to Amartya Sen (1999, 2000), the
ethos of sustainable development is
embedded in the democratic process to
ensure equity of all globally produced
resources.
The vision of sustainable business exemplifies
“integrative business ethics” that mediates between
ethical, political, and economic rationality (Ulrich,
2008, cited in Rendortff, 2019) as a new strategy for
the social responsibility of business and moral
management.
The concept of integrity places virtue at the core.
Unpacking reveals:
This concept of sustainable business
ethics undertakes/considers that
“critical analyses:
- must be combined with an
interdisciplinary institutionalist
approach to economics and social
sciences as the approach to
understanding business ethics.
(Rendtorff, 2019).
• -considers a broader
interdisciplinary, institutional, and
historical perspective on the norms
that include issues of justice and
equity, which must be entangled with
the values of corporations.
Sustainable business ethics
combine- Freeman, Amartya Sen
and Fraser .
Freeman: Discussions of business and
capitalism become meaningful and work
when we combine business, ethics, and
society based on the idea of the stakeholder
Amartya Sen thinks ethics is the foundation
of economic action (Sen, 1987) based on the
vision of what individuals aspire for:
recognition, capability and development as
freedom [living a meaningful life].
Rawls’ concept of political justice [ will be
discussed elaborately from 4-10]
Accountability
+ Accountability of actors in the global social and ethical
economy
Predominant ideas look for three aspects of accountability—legal, social, and moral to
understand their respective roles in holding corporations to account.
Legal accountability has clarity, force, and effectiveness on corporate functioning and on
the states
Responsibility—the Bridge between materialization of rights and accountability
The need and demand for such accountability grows greater by the day,
Paradigms of accountability were basically constructed for a world of state-based
multilateralism, but now, they are a multilevel complex of institutions, networks, coalitions, and
informal arrangements.
We need new principled frameworks to secure human rights and accountability —principles
that recognize the complexity of agency and the claim of rights.
The SDGs as responsible business actions evidenced
(a) how human rights can be plausibly linked to accounts of corresponding obligations,
(b) (b) how such obligations can be allocated to diverse potential agents of justice, and (c) how
those agents might be held accountable for fulfilling those obligations.
The responsibilities approach to human rights and—
more broadly—the effort to understand accountability
anew and achieve global justice.
Cont…
To do so, we must focus on
1. capabilities of multilateral economic institutions where
SDGs play a ley role as the social choice policy by
linking their newly assumed responsibilities.
2. To establish clearer lines of responsibility for both
performance and oversight
The Concept of an
Ethical Economy
And the SDGs as a
social choice & policy
30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LggTrGMygFY
Sustainability refers to the long-term maintenance of systems
focussing on environmental, economic and social considerations.
Maintenance implies
• Compliance first
• Also, it integrates accountability and responsibility
[ Will discuss from 3]
Legitimacy -The argument that embedding sustainability can
create legitimacy for business firms
Reference list
❑ Rendretoff D J Philosophy of Management and Sustainability: Rethinking
Business Ethics and Social Responsibility in Sustainable Development,
Chapter # 2 & 5
❑ Sen A (The reach of social choice theory. Soc Choice Welf (2012) 39:259–
272 DOI 10.1007/s00355-011-0613-7
❑ Evans. P(2002). Symposium on Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen
Collective Capabilities, Culture, and Amartya Sen's Development as
Freedom. Studies in Comparative

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