Sustainable Development: The UN Millennium Development Goals, the UN Global Compact, and the Common Good

21. Beyond Corporate Responsibility to the Common Good

369 21 | Beyond Corporate Responsibility to the Common Good The Millennium Development Goals, UN Global Compact, and Business Enterprise Sandra Waddock The breadth and depth of the issues that abound in the world suggest that they are systemic, and must be dealt with by seeking root causes and fundamental issues. corporate responsibility measures—which generally accept the system as given—will not get us to the systemic changes that are needed for sustainability, social justice, and democracy to thrive. For that, we need more fundamental change—in the purpose of the corporation, in the dominance of financial interests over the “real” economy, in the distribution of profits, and in the conversation about what it means to be in society collectively. certainly, the united nations Global compact (unGc) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent positive steps toward greater corporate citizenship from businesses and greater awareness of the steps that countries (and others) need to take in achieving a more equitable and just world. capitalism, at least as it has evolved in the past few decades, needs reform, not only to deal with the obvious flaws exposed during the 2008 meltdown and ensuing Great Recession, but also to deal with the very real issues of climate change and all of its implications. 370 Sandra Waddock Business as usual will not get us there. We need a societal, if not a planetary, perspective on the role of business—and the other important institutions that constitute human civilization—to help us get there. Real wealth would find its basis in a just society and in a collective understanding that we are all on this planet together, that its resources are limited, and that we need to be stewards of those resources. It would be a wealth that is based on human connection and community, on sufficiency and equity, engagement with things that are really important in life—love, laughter, joy, connection with others, art and music—and not in the continual quest for more “stuff,” with which our current form of capitalism seems to be obsessed. A decade or more into the life of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the united nations Global compact (unGc), the world arguably has significantly changed, but, perhaps more significantly , has not changed nearly enough. During the first ten years of the twenty-first century, we experienced the enron, Worldcom, and related scandals, the advent of human-induced climate change,1 a global financial crisis built upon a now collapsing and highly suspect mortgage industry, and a financial services industry that has created a global gambling casino focused mainly on speculation and the accumulation of wealth for those who are already well off, with little consideration for the health or well-being of others in society (or the natural environment), rather than on any genuinely productive activity. Global inequity has continued to increase, as the rich grow richer and the poor, with some exceptions, do not change their lot very much. ecologists note that virtually every ecological system is in decline, many large mammals are on the verge of extinction, and species loss is occurring at devastating rates. This list of the world’s ills could go on. consider the following: • The continuing gaps between rich and poor (more than three billion of the world’s nearly seven billion people live on less than $2.50 a day and 1.2 billion on less than $1 a day; 1.1 billion people have no access to clean water; 2.4 billion lack adequate sanitation facilities), north and South, haves and have-nots, and economically developed and undeveloped nations. • The ecological devastation that is consistently wrought in the name of “progress,” “economic development,” and “competitive advantage” Beyond corporate Responsibility to the common Good 371 by companies, who (among other practices) continue to produce numerous products using strategies of planned obsolescence, namely, products that will shortly become outdated, broken, unfashionable, or otherwise made useless within a relatively short period of time, ending up in overflowing landfills or incinerators. • The seemingly unceasing wave of scandals that have hit company after company, not to mention financial institution after financial institution , which have created enormous government bailouts and the rhetoric of companies or institutions that are ”too big to fail.” Within these institutions, think of the many individuals within those companies who have been involved in “unethical” practices that have resulted in great harm for their stakeholders. And consider the...