Just values

Is it naïve, or visionary, to insist that business should reflect moral values? Roger East on a report that says it must - or bust.

It’s no longer such an unfamiliar idea, that arguments for sustainable development can engage effectively with the corporate sector by demonstrating a sound business case for sustainability. But you are putting a cat among the pigeons - or rather, perhaps, a lamb among the wolves - when you start suggesting that sustainable business should be driven by what's morally right.

The Just Values project, undertaken jointly by BT and Forum for the Future, does just that - it gets to grips with the ethical case for companies engaging with the sustainable development agenda.

It's a case with four principal foundations:

• equity today - ending a situation where, for much of the world's population, we fall far short of the goal of meeting the needs of the present;
• environmental justice - ensuring equality of access to a clean environment, and equality of protection from harm, fear, disempowerment and the destruction of social cohesion;
• intergenerational equity - at present our own material lifestyles deplete and impair the resources, pollution 'sinks' and life support systems on which future generations will depend;
• stewardship - we have moral obligations to other creatures and to protect natural systems, which are in any case interconnected with human systems in what Martin Luther King called “an inescapable network of mutuality”.

The report which sums up the Just Values project - and seeks to propel it forward - is co-authored by BT’s Chris Tuppen and Forum’s programme director Jonathon Porritt. In it they argue that businesses and government have a moral obligation to push the boundaries of the business case for sustainable development beyond their ‘comfort zone’. Moreover, they say that if a company’s business case doesn’t have a genuine moral foundation, it will ultimately fail - primarily for lack of trust. And, crucially, they insist that we can’t shy away from the crunch question about the need for moral leadership in business on those tough decisions when the right course for sustainability doesn’t ‘pay’ in terms of shareholder value. This is a minefield which Ian Christie enters for Green Futures in 'Honest to goodness'.

The core of the argument concerns the building of trust, something which is both increasingly recognised as of great value to businesses, and increasingly perceived as being abused by cynical and even criminally corrupt corporate behaviour. Just Values contends that corporate activity must be founded on a strong moral position, saying that “a company can’t build trust on an amoral basis”. The challenge for business leaders is to extend the business case by combining pragmatic business logic with idealism and vision. The challenge for government, while it can’t compel companies to be virtuous, is to create the right economic conditions and regulatory ‘playing field’ to encourage this to happen - and to set higher minimum standards that are enforceable.

Just Values identifies five stages of corporate engagement with sustainable development. At the bottom of the pile are the ‘outlaws’, still in the CSR wilderness, who haven’t yet even measured up to the requirements of existing legislation. The ‘compliers’ do the minimum that’s required in terms of their ‘licence to operate’ in society, and are induced to remain in compliance with tightening standards by the commercial benefits that flow from doing so. One step up are the ‘case-makers’, recognising the commercial self-interest in improving their social and environmental performance, most obviously perhaps through greater ecoefficiency. The ‘innovators’ push the business case further in their responses to the environmental and social challenges we face, seeking to give themselves scope to do more than the prevailing conditions in capital markets currently allow, while the (few) ‘trailblazers’ get out there to create new models for business and economic development which can deliver maximum social and environmental benefit.

Jonathon Porritt’s article ‘Change drivers’ expands on who these trailblazers are, and how they have been faring in the tough real world. It’s not a role which many companies can be expected to aspire to, but Just Values does throw down the gauntlet to business leaders to become ‘innovators’, maintaining that it’s time for them “to come out fighting for what they believe in”. Meanwhile, Polly Ghazi ’s coverage of a major global report provides a forceful reminder that there’s still a long way to go even to bring the ‘outlaws’ into compliance [see 'Business Rules' ].

Just Values: beyond the business case for sustainable development was published in May as part of BT’s series of occasional papers. An electronic version in PDF format is available to download from www.btplc.com/betterworld, where you can also access records of the extensive worldwide consultation process that shaped the report.

13 October 2003

Roger East