This paper is a call to reimagine the normative contours of moneymaking in business. Economic activity has long invited social scrutiny of its moral architecture yet the basic framework of what it means to “do right” in modern-day business is hotly contested. We expect firms to make money but their moneymaking choices invite evaluation of how it is made. Sustainability is a visible reference to this wider societal role. The idea matters because the civic struggles it spurs over moneymaking are struggles over moral clarity. Where does sustainability beyond simple moneymaking begin and end?
The paper is part of a book project that intersects two areas of inquiry: How non-state actors, like business, affect the terms of transnational governance and how transnational and local norms affect actors’ (business) preferences. I have conducted 63 detailed interviews with individuals in Fortune 500 companies, cooperatives, small businesses, consultancies, and nonprofits. The nuanced data elucidate how struggles over normative preferences can set the stage for social outcomes we apply to business. Here, I carefully construct a typology of norms to benchmark the social dimensions of sustainability from minimal to maximal expectations.
Efforts to define, and defend, a moral architecture for ‘sustainable’ business typically morph into the business case for social awareness. Consider the popular catchphrase ‘do well by doing Good,’ in which we use an economic issue to capture how we imagine a normative issue. We debate formulas to optimize financially Good business motives; whether virtue pays, and whether firms are even capable of virtue. Many attempts to typify sustainability are really exercises that map strategies firms utilize, or might utilize, to indicate sustainable practices, rather than disclose the very principles of sustainable business. By changing the focus, I contribute a firmer sense of ‘boundaries’ to how we imagine a social capacity of business.
