Responsible business in a time of turmoil?

• Posted by Osbert Lancaster
• On September 18, 2008


• Interests: Corporate Social Responsibility

Looks like rocky times ahead for all of us - financial markets in turmoil, fuel and food prices soaring, unemployment rising. The US and Europe are facing a long period of recession, with knock on effects across the globe.

What does this mean for businesses that are trying to be responsible? I offer three propositions to think about:

Proposition 1: Fundamental human needs remain fundamental
Manfred Max-Neef, the Chilean economist and environmentalist, argues we all have nine fundamental human needs: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation, creation, identity and freedom.

These human needs haven't gone away, indeed recent events have reminded many of us their importance (housing, fuel prices. anyone?).

Proposition 2: The real world still exists
We're still living on a real planet with an ecosystem stressed to the limit, and millions living in poverty. We've still got climate change. And water shortages, and collapse of fisheries. And regional conflicts.

Public and political attention has recently woken up to many of these issues. Some distraction is understandable, but pretending they've gone away will be catastrophic.

Proposition 3: We're still rich
As individuals, businesses and nations we may now be worse off financially. But we're still incredibly rich in terms of our skills and knowledge; our organisational capacity and our social systems. And there's still money looking for good investments. 

If we can identify the right things to do, and it may not be easy, we should be able to find ways of making, at least some of them, happen.

Many businesses, green, ethical or otherwise, will face real difficulties. If they focus on survival and jettison social and environmental 'nice to haves' that will be understandable.

But I suggest businesses that have any room for manoeuvre, for the best chance of success, their strategies should be informed by these propositions:

• address real human needs, not fleeting desires
• solve real world problems, don't exacerbate them for short term benefits
• use all our capital - natural, social, human, manufactured and financial - creatively and imaginatively

And finally, we all should encourage governments at every level, and across the world, to use the coming period of reconstruction to lay the foundations for a healthy society on a healthy planet - not a return to the unsustainable bubble that's now bursting.

Osbert Lancaster is a director of Scotland-based Footprint Consulting. His Ethical Enterprise course at the Centre for Human Ecology and the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow starts soon.

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