Sustainable Business Models: what can change?

The book “Intrinsic Sustainable Development: epistemes, science, business and sustainability” (Birkin & Polesie 2011) is about the impact of an emerging episteme upon ourselves, society and business. Basically an episteme is what makes knowledge possible. It can seem disturbing, even frightening, to think that our world – our whole world – can change because of a change in the possibility of knowledge. But other people see this as liberating: an exciting opportunity to venture forth into new unexplored territories just as the explorers of old.

But consider too that the world does change for individuals and groups in accepted ways. Although PR does not subscribe to any revealed religious orthodoxy, consider how the members of a religious groups, even the humbling Methodists, may regard themselves as “reborn”, “renewed” or “saved” when they accept the Faith for this brings with it a new episteme – a new possibility for knowledge; caused in this case by the recognition that we live in a God-made world. In a way, Buddhism owes its whole existence to overcoming whatever “episteme” makes knowledge possible in an individual’s life – the Buddhist seeking enlightenment and freedom from this world is doing nothing less than overcoming the episteme by means of which a world is brought into existence. Finally, every page of the holy book of Islam, the Koran, exhorts followers to “know yourself” – excellent advice and you can think of this as getting to know the knowledge that that has created our view of ourselves and the world.

But you may ask what has this got to do with business?
After all business is based upon rationality and the science of economics right?  It is based upon universal truths that will always apply. We need goods and services in order to live so the basic need for business is very practical and nothing to do with belief or myth. Likewise neoclassical economics is based upon the very reasonable assumption that we make rational choices when deciding how to spend our money and consume resources. Surely this is universal and sensible and will not change with any emerging episteme?

 You would be wrong to think this way. Modern business and economics were established in accordance with the best scientific knowledge of their day but much of that is now around 200 hundred years old. Furthermore Modern business and economics are indeed set up to serve Mankind  but we have been forced to recognise in the last few decades that serving nature is also important – there is no Mankind without nature. Indeed the whole Sustainable Development movement has its origins in the fact that Modern business and economics serves Mankind too well – at the cost of ruining our living planet!

You can get the full story of the impact of the emerging episteme upon business, society and ourselves in the Intrinsic Sustainable Development (ISD) book mentioned above. But note for now that Modern business and economics needs to and is changing. PR now extracts from the ISD book (Birkin and Polesie 2011, pp. 284-286) to investigate a little of how  Modern business and economics could change with the emerging episteme which is called the Primal Episteme.

Notes to Comparison of Modern and Primal Business Typologies

Philosophical Foundations

 Modern business is dominated by the “logical belief systems” of traditional economics: “The free market, conceived as being a pristine engine, is as much a fiction as a Euclidean triangle.” (Ellis, 1970, p. 165). These constructions may be real, but they do not exist.

By “empirical realism,” I mean that ordinary things, the material things around us, do indeed exist independent of our thoughts. It may be crude, but it is a sufficient and necessary starting point for Primal business.

The Harvard socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson writes: “The time has come for economists and business leaders, so haughtily pride themselves as masters of the real world, to acknowledge the existence of the real real world.” (Wilson, 1998, p. 326).

Values

Shareholder values need to be aligned with market values and those in turn with the social values of a population educating, experiencing and valuing rich human, ecological and biosphere relations.

It is “Time to measure what we treasure.”We need to be “Measuring true wealth and the well-being of nations beyond GDP” (EC, 2009).

Ethics

A Primal business ethical system has to be learned on the job. As Arie de Geus points out:

“1. The company is a living being.

2. The decisions for action made by this living being

result from a learning process.” (Geus, 2002, p. 201)

Business Units

Bear in mind that “to contract” also means “to shrink” and that we now have a Global Compact (UN, 2010) for Primal business.

The realities that we derive for Primal business units should be as close as possible to what we know of the interventions that they cause. In this regard, Primal business units — like Primal people — need to synthesise as well as analyse.

Goals

A shift from “Having More” to “Being More”.

Impact of the Primal Episteme upon Modern Business

References

Birkin, F.K. and Polesie, T., (2011). Intrinsic Sustainable Development: epistemes, science, business and sustainability. Singapore, World Scientific Press.