Business within Limits. Deep Ecology and Buddhist Economics

Citation

Mesure, H. (2007), "Business within Limits. Deep Ecology and Buddhist Economics", Society and Business Review, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 221-223. https://doi.org/10.1108/sbr.2007.2.2.221.3

This volume is a collective opus directed by L. Zsolnai and K.J. Ims. The first is Professor and Director of the Business Ethics Center at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He is also Chairman of the Business Ethics Inter‐Faculty Group of the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS). K.J Ims is Associate Professor at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH). He is also responsible for the Business Ethics section of the MBA Program at NHH and chairman of the Center for Ethics and Economics at NHH. The others ten contributors are all well known and experienced scholars in the fields of ethics, ecological economics or feminist studies. More than the usual US authors, the volume sets Hungarian, Dutch, Australian Austrian scholars who are often original voices in the academicals small world.

This collective book is a very original one since it associates the Deep Ecology perspective developed by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess and Buddhist Economics with an inch of feminist approach. As Zsolnai and Ims underline it in their preface “the ideas of Deep Ecology and Buddhist Economics are strongly correlated. The Buddhist Economics implies simplicity and non‐violence in lifestyle and production, while Deep ecology pre‐supposes that nature and humanity are inseparable and both have intrinsic worth” (p. viii). As the editors notice “This book is a product of friendship. We hope it will produce other Deep ecology and Buddhist Economics who agree that “less is more” and “small is beautiful”.

The book is composed of three parts. The first one “Deep ecology and the buddhist perspective” sets the chapters 1 and 2. Ims and Zsolnai wrote the first chapter “Shallow success and deep failure” that introduces the conceptual bases of the book and the main idea that “we need scientific and technological knowledge, but we also need a better understanding of existential conditions of human beings to avoid the fallacy of defining most problems as technical‐economical‐scientific and solving them in purely technical ways. We should gain a better understanding of self‐realization and what self‐realization means in the perspective of deep ecology and sustainability.” (p. 10). The chapter 2 “Tackling Greed and Achieving Sustainable Development” by R. Welford is quite important in the book since it calls for a New Buddhist Economics and for a Buddhist approach of business that challenge the nowadays model of consumption and militates for a spiritual dimension in business and economics.

The chapters 3‐7 compose the second and main part: “The limits of business”. In Chapter 3 “Economics and culture” S. Ingebrigten and O. Jakobsen argue “that the economy invades culture and that consumer conception dominates more and more the human mind” that prejudicial to economics itself but also to culture and sustainable development. Ingebrigten and Jakobsen propose an original approach of the stakeholder theory as a dialogue between stakeholders representing culture and others representing economics. They also try to distinguish the person versus the consumer. J. Gowdy, in Chapter 4 “Business ethics and the death of homo oeconomicus” stresses on the revolution that is underway in theoretical economics that contests the homo oeconomicus model and therefore the responsibility of the firm. The maximisation of profit is being contested opening the door to “bring ethics and social context explicitly into discussion of firm behaviour” (p. 83). Chapter 5 “Reducing society's metabolism” by P. Daniels refers “to the physical flows and transformation of material and energy that fuel the human economy”. This physical economy that has emerged since the late 1980s is highly consistent with Buddhist economist (according to Daniels) since its aim is to reduce human socioeconomics metabolism through ecological modernization. The Chapter 6 “Finance as if nature mattered” written by N. Hofstra and A. Shope is more rooted in deep ecology. This chapters argues that the primary function of money and capital have been perverted by the nowadays approach of finance for witch the creation of financial wealth is a goal in itself, a goal that dominates all this others specially human or social ones. This chapter also proposes a new approach of finance. Z. Boda, in Chapter 7 “Respecting the commons” discuss about the natural environment as a public good or commons. Criticizing the traditional economic viewpoint of common good, Boda suggests that “the notion of commons implies a genuinely ethical meaning” (p. 167) Therefore, commons goods cannot be reduced to economical calculus and “privatizing in not necessary a solution but a source of problem” (p. 167). Boda militates for an ethical approach of business and reaches to three correlative duties placed on business.

The third part “New models of economizing” contains the four last chapters among which two are individually signed by Ims and Zsolnai. According J. Nelson (Chapter 8 “The relation firm: a buddhist and feminist analysis”) notes deep ecology and Buddhism share a thoroughly relational ontology. She also critics the traditional conception of firm that doesn't take in account that “firms may be active, connected, evolving organizations, or that they or they people within them have the capacity of acting in engaged, meaningful and responsible way” (p. 209). For her firms must be understood as “relational entities” (p. 214). Chapter 9 “Take it personally” by K.J. Ims largely based on Arendt's analysis of Eichmann's trial introduces on of the main idea of this collective book. Each of us has a personal responsibility in what happens. Therefore, Deep Economics and Buddhist economics are founded on changes at the individual level even, and mainly, in professional context. The Chapter 10 “Toward an ecology of spirit” (that must not confused with Baterson's approach) is the most surprising since M. Bell – the only consultant who was priest‐ suggests applying the traditional teaching of aboriginal elders to organizations. The chapter develops the thesis that organizations are organisms and are part of the living universe. They also have a spirit. They have self‐organizing capabilities and are guides by the same developmental principles that guide the development of Earth itself. The 11th and last chapter “Ethical business” by L. Zsolnai is a proposition of a business ethics based of Jonas's ethics that insists on the duty towards the future generations.

This volume is fundamentally original, full of ideas, pleasant to read and it opens a great range of researches possibilities. It's also a hymn to provide human, social and ecological limits to the activities of business as a model of society that is running to its lost. It's clearly a normative book that invites each of us to act at the individual level and to reform itself. Of course, the thesis defended can be contested but they have the merit to be quite different of the habitual business ethics soap.