Corporate environmental responsibility

Journal of Business Ethics

Volumn 17, Issue 8, 1998, Pages 825-838

  DesJardins, Joe ^a,b  

^a St Johns University School of Nursing   (United States)

^b ST JOHN'S UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001005873     PISSN: 01674544     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1005719707880     Document Type: Review

References (36)

1. Jim MacNeill, "Strategies for Sustainable Development", in Managing Planet Earth (Scientific American, 1990), pp. 109-123.
2. Present estimates suggest that the rate of population increase is one billion people every 9-10 years. The doubling to 11 billion in fifty years is "conservative" in the sense that it assumes, contrary to trends, that the rate of increase will remain constant.
3. Herman Daly points out that there are two important reasons why doubling the population would require significantly more than a doubling of economic activity to meet constant demand. First, allowance must be made for the tremendous capital accumulation that would be necessary to transform all these resources into final products. Second, the mineral and energy resources needed for such growth would need to come from increasingly less accessible and low grade deposits; we've already taken the readily accessible and cheap iron, coal, oil, aluminum, uranium, timber, etc. See Herman Daly, "Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem", reprinted in Valuing the Earth, edited by Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend (Boston: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 267-273.
4. Robert Frosch and Nicholas Gallopoulos, "Strategies for Manufacturing", Managing Planet Earth, p. 98.
5. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 133.
6. Environmental economists, of course, are aware of these problems. Ingenious techniques and suggestions for pricing non-market goods, internalizing externalities, discounting future values, and for establishing property rights for unowned goods are some of the methods used to overcome market failures. For an insightful analysis of these issues, see Mark Sagoff The Economy of the Earth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), especially Chapter Four.
7. Mark Sagoff, Economy of the Earth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
8. Norman Bowie, "New Directions in Corporate Social Responsibility," in Business Horizons (July-August 1991), p. 56. Bowie's own views are developed in Business Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982) as well as in the second edition of that book, written with Ronald Duska (1990). Bowie applies this thinking to environmental matters in "Morality, Money, and Motor Cars", Business, Ethics, and the Environment: The Public Policy Debate, edited by W. Michael Hoffman, Robert Frederick, and Edward Petry, Jr. (New York: Quorum Books, 1990), pp. 89-97.
9. Norman Bowie, "New Directions in Corporate Social Responsibility," in Business Horizons (July-August 1991), p. 56. Bowie's own views are developed in Business Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982) as well as in the second edition of that book, written with Ronald Duska (1990). Bowie applies this thinking to environmental matters in "Morality, Money, and Motor Cars", Business, Ethics, and the Environment: The Public Policy Debate, edited by W. Michael Hoffman, Robert Frederick, and Edward Petry, Jr. (New York: Quorum Books, 1990), pp. 89-97.
10. Norman Bowie, "New Directions in Corporate Social Responsibility," in Business Horizons (July-August 1991), p. 56. Bowie's own views are developed in Business Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982) as well as in the second edition of that book, written with Ronald Duska (1990). Bowie applies this thinking to environmental matters in "Morality, Money, and Motor Cars", Business, Ethics, and the Environment: The Public Policy Debate, edited by W. Michael Hoffman, Robert Frederick, and Edward Petry, Jr. (New York: Quorum Books, 1990), pp. 89-97.
11. The former view is best represented by Tom Donaldson, Corporations and Morality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982) and more recently in The Ethics of International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). One of the earliest statements of the "moral minimum" in this context is John Simon, Charles Powers, and Jon Gunnemann, "The Responsibilities of Corporations and Their Owners," in The Ethical Investor: Universities and Corporate Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). For a version of the latter, see Joseph Desjardins and John McCall, "A Defense of Employee Rights", Journal of Business Ethics (Fall 1985).
12. The former view is best represented by Tom Donaldson, Corporations and Morality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982) and more recently in The Ethics of International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). One of the earliest statements of the "moral minimum" in this context is John Simon, Charles Powers, and Jon Gunnemann, "The Responsibilities of Corporations and Their Owners," in The Ethical Investor: Universities and Corporate Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). For a version of the latter, see Joseph Desjardins and John McCall, "A Defense of Employee Rights", Journal of Business Ethics (Fall 1985).
13. The former view is best represented by Tom Donaldson, Corporations and Morality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982) and more recently in The Ethics of International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). One of the earliest statements of the "moral minimum" in this context is John Simon, Charles Powers, and Jon Gunnemann, "The Responsibilities of Corporations and Their Owners," in The Ethical Investor: Universities and Corporate Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). For a version of the latter, see Joseph Desjardins and John McCall, "A Defense of Employee Rights", Journal of Business Ethics (Fall 1985).
14. The former view is best represented by Tom Donaldson, Corporations and Morality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982) and more recently in The Ethics of International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). One of the earliest statements of the "moral minimum" in this context is John Simon, Charles Powers, and Jon Gunnemann, "The Responsibilities of Corporations and Their Owners," in The Ethical Investor: Universities and Corporate Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). For a version of the latter, see Joseph Desjardins and John McCall, "A Defense of Employee Rights", Journal of Business Ethics (Fall 1985).
15. Norman Bowie, "Morality, Money, and Motor Cars," pp. 91-95.
16. "Morality, Money, and Motor Cars," pp. 92-93.
17. W. Michael Hoffman, "Business and Environmental Ethics", in Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 1 no. 2 (April 1991), pp. 169-184.
18. Besides Hoffman, see Donald VanDeVeer, "Interspecific Justice", People, Penguins, and Plastic Trees, edited by Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1986) pp. 51-66; and Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986) especially chapter 4.
19. Besides Hoffman, see Donald VanDeVeer, "Interspecific Justice", People, Penguins, and Plastic Trees, edited by Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1986) pp. 51-66; and Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986) especially chapter 4.
20. Two interesting attempts to provide principled means for resolving such conflicts are Donald VanDeVeer, "Interspecific Justice", Inquiry, Vol. 22, no. 1-2 (summer 1979) and Paul Taylor's discussion of "priority principles" in his Respect for Nature, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ, 1986).
21. Perhaps the best known examples of such an ecocentric challenge to a biocentric and animal rights approach are: J. Baird Callicott, "Review of Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights", Environmental Ethics, Vol. 7 (1985) pp. 365-372; Callicott's "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair", Environmental Ethics, Vol. 2 (1980) pp. 311-328; and Mark Sagoff, "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce", Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 22 (1984).
22. Perhaps the best known examples of such an ecocentric challenge to a biocentric and animal rights approach are: J. Baird Callicott, "Review of Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights", Environmental Ethics, Vol. 7 (1985) pp. 365-372; Callicott's "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair", Environmental Ethics, Vol. 2 (1980) pp. 311-328; and Mark Sagoff, "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce", Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 22 (1984).
23. Perhaps the best known examples of such an ecocentric challenge to a biocentric and animal rights approach are: J. Baird Callicott, "Review of Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights", Environmental Ethics, Vol. 7 (1985) pp. 365-372; Callicott's "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair", Environmental Ethics, Vol. 2 (1980) pp. 311-328; and Mark Sagoff, "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce", Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol. 22 (1984).
24. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
25. Herman Daly, "Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem", op. cit., pp. 267-268.
26. For an ethical analysis of the Pacific Lumber case, see Lisa Newton, Watersheds: Classic Cases in Environmental Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1993), chapter 5; and Lisa Newton, "The Chainsaws of Greed", Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 29-61.
27. For an ethical analysis of the Pacific Lumber case, see Lisa Newton, Watersheds: Classic Cases in Environmental Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1993), chapter 5; and Lisa Newton, "The Chainsaws of Greed", Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 29-61.
28. An early version of this argument was offered by Brian Barry, "Intergenerational Justice in Energy Policy", in Douglas MacLean and Peter Brown (eds.), Energy and the Future (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983).
29. Frosch and Gallopoulos, "Strategies for Manufacturing" p. 98.
30. For examples of how this work might develop in management, see Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), Rogene Buchholz, Principles of Environmental Management (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993) and W. Edward Stead and Jean Garner Stead, Management for a Small Planet (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992). Of the three, Buchholz offers the most philosophically refined account of the relevant ethical issues.
31. For examples of how this work might develop in management, see Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), Rogene Buchholz, Principles of Environmental Management (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993) and W. Edward Stead and Jean Garner Stead, Management for a Small Planet (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992). Of the three, Buchholz offers the most philosophically refined account of the relevant ethical issues.
32. For examples of how this work might develop in management, see Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), Rogene Buchholz, Principles of Environmental Management (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993) and W. Edward Stead and Jean Garner Stead, Management for a Small Planet (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992). Of the three, Buchholz offers the most philosophically refined account of the relevant ethical issues.
33. For convenience, I will ignore the intricacies of the debates concerning future generations and limit my concern with the interests of people living in the near future. Roughly, I would take this to mean the next 50 years or so and to include the interests of millions of people presently, or soon to be, alive who are not represented in present markets.
34. Ronald Dworkin, "What Rights Do We Have?", in Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 273.
35. I have in mind here problems like the "disappear ing beneficiaries," average vs. total happiness, expected utility vs. actual consequences, and the argument from ignorance. For a review of some of these problems as they relate to environmental concerns, see my Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy (Belmont. CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1993), chapter four.
36. Versions of this paper were read to the Society of Business Ethics and the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World. I wish to thank Leslie Francis, John McCall, and Patricia Werhane for their helpful comments on those occasions. This paper was also much improved by the helpful suggestions of an anonymous reviewer for the journal. An early version of this paper appears in Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics, Joseph R. DesJardins and John McCall, eds. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing 1996).