Essay About Sustainable Development And Corporate Social Responsibility

On the Paradox of Corporate
On the Paradox of Corporate
Introduction
Recently, some authors have argued that there is a
need for a paradigm shift or a fundamental
change in the practice of business, in organizational
behaviour and performance if the ideals of
corporate social responsibility and sustainable
development are to be achieved (Gladwin et al.
1995, Ehrenfeld 2000, Hueseman 2001, Senge &
Carstedt 2001, Welford 1998, 2002). However,
these calls are in a sense a re-statement of radical
calls for sustainable development already presented
in the 1960s and 1970s (M’Gonigle 1999).
This article shows what are the consequences of
the fact that these radical calls have failed and
become overshadowed by the technocentric paradigm,
by the conventional modernity paradigm
that already prevailed before the birth of modern
environmentalism. I concentrate on corporate
environmental management, a major issue within
the existing corporate social responsibility debate.
The article defines sustainable development as
development that does not systematically increase
the underlying causes of negative environmental,
social and economic effects (Robe rt et al. 2002,
2004). In this way, it is relatively easy to determine
whether a certain activity is sustainable or
unsustainable. We know that, in the long term,
it is not sustainable to use non-renewable natural
resources, such as fossil coal, oil or natural gas.
Ehrenfeld (2000) views sustainable development
as development that sustains itself forever into the
indefinite future. By definition, the world energy
system is not sustainable. Eighty per cent of the
world energy production relies on non-renewable
fossil fuels (Williams 1994), which are emission
intensive, and often on fuels imported to national
and regional economies. We also know that the
production of chemicals and substances foreign to
nature is risky even if there are no currently
known negative impacts of certain substances.
If the over-harvesting of renewable natural
resources exceeding their reproduction capacity,
as is currently the case in tropical areas, continues
systematically, this is not sustainable over the long
term. The social dimension of sustainable development
is under risk. Twenty per cent of the
world population possesses roughly 80% of the
resources (Hueseman 2001). The (systematically)
increasing gap between the rich and poor, both
between and within countries, is systematically
decreasing the opportunities for education, social
and healthcare services, security and communitybuilding or is reducing the accessibility to
resources and information to a small elite in the
developing countries.
When sustainable development is defined in such
a broad and qualitative manner, i.e. as development
that does not systematically increase the
principle mechanisms of negative impacts, it can
be possible to agree