Tag: #Neoliberalism

Economics for Life

Time for a New Economics

By Sandra Waddock

Steen Valentin recently pointed out in a BOS blog that we – and particularly economists – need to look beyond Milton Friedman’s famous New York Times argument that ‘The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits’. Friedman’s argument underpins today’s dominant ideology and the economics that shapes it – neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism has a core and often repeated set of tenets or memes – the core building blocks of narratives and of culture (ideas, phrases, words, images, symbols). These well-rehearsed memes include that markets and trade are ‘free’, economic actors are self-interested profit maximizers, free markets will resolve societal problems, responsibility is individual, less government is invariably good, and continual economic growth through globalism is feasible and desirable.

Fundamentally, Friedman stated that the sole purpose of the firm is to maximize profits or shareholder wealth, despite that shareholders are, as Charles Handy long ago pointed out, hardly actual owners of the firm in any real sense.

This narrative completely overlooks both societal and ecological impacts of economic activity because nature is completely ignored, even assumed away.

As former UK Prime Minister once put it, ‘There is no such thing as society’. More to the point, Thatcher also stated, ‘There is no alternative’ to neoliberalism, a phrase that got shortened to TINA – still widely believed today.

There Really Are Alternatives!

Is there really no alternative? Particularly in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic, climate emergency, massive species extinction, and growth global inequality? In a recent paper ‘Reframing and Transforming Economics around Life’ I argued for just such an alternative, and also that economics that supports all of life needs to be the mainstream economic orthodoxy. It cannot be considered ‘heterodox’ or come with a modifier that sets it apart from the mainstream.

That means finding new memes as powerful and compelling as the neoliberal ones they need to replace.

Such thinking, while fundamentally based in economics, also needs to encompass core societal and ecological considerations to reframe how business is done and how economic activity in general is undertaken.

The paper synthesizes six new memes that frame an economics in support of all of life. It draws from a wide swath of economics and other literature (including now ‘heterodox economics’) and supports new approaches like Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics – with a few core memes. The six memes are briefly described below.

Six Core Memes for Economic Orthodoxy in Support of All of Life
  • The first new meme is stewardship of the whole, which means that all economic actors have a shared responsibility for the whole system (or nested set of subsystems) that their activities impact. This meme explicitly recognizes both the broader social – societal – system in which economic activity is embedded – and the natural environment in which societies are intimately, inextricably, and interdependently nested. The good of whole systems needs to be kept constantly in mind, whether that is the good of a whole company, a community, a nation, or the planet itself.
  • Another is Co-creating Collective Value. Here I draw from the pioneering work of Donaldson and Walsh, who stated the purpose of business as creating collective value absent dignity violations. The idea of co-creation invites collective participation in the production of value for the whole system – not just for one stakeholder but for the many that are affected by businesses and other economic actors. Multiple values and multiple stakeholders will inevitably mean new metrics by which to assess economic productivity and activity. Co-creating collective value brings back the original meaning of wealth, which has been corrupted to meaning only financial wealth, but which originally meant health, wellbeing, and prosperity.
  • A third relates to cosmopolitan-localist governance. The idea here is that though we live in a globalized world (and some things will remain globalized), many decisions – economic and other – need to be placed at the most local level feasible. That ensures access, voice, and participation by many more actors, and encourages sharing of ideas, knowledge, and other resources in contextually appropriate ways.
  • A fourth is that of regeneration, reciprocity, and circularity, which acknowledges the interconnectedness and interdependence of humans and nature, and that todays so-called take-make-waste production processes are no longer either truly efficient from a whole systems perspective. Regeneration means that production processes need to allow time for the Earth to regenerate resources that will be needed long into the future. Reciprocity means that trade and exchanges need to be mutually beneficial among other humans and with respect to nature. Circularity embodies the idea that ‘waste equals food’ as frequently expressed by the concept of circular economy.  
  • The precept of relationship and connectedness places human economic and social activity into the full complexity and ‘wickedness’ of its connected and relational socio-ecological context. It recognizes that people are social creatures by nature, who only exist in the context of community. It acknowledges, as the African saying Ubuntu goes, ‘I am because we are’.
  • Finally, equitable markets and trade recognizes that markets exist and are important to meeting real (not manufactured) human needs, and that they need to be fair to all participants throughout the supply chain. That means that products and services need to be fully-costed and priced accordingly – and that all so called ‘externalities’ or negative by-products of production need to be incorporated into prices.

Though far more detail is provided in the actual paper, this brief outline synthesizes some of the core aspects of a framing for economics that has the potential to support all of life, rather than as is the case with neoliberalism, ignoring life and our Earth itself as a living system. It is past time for such a shift in thinking – and core memes – to take place. These ideas are offered as a tentative framework for beginning to reshape economic thinking in the direction of what works for all of life – wealth in its original meaning!

Further Reading

Sandra Waddock, Reframing and Transforming Economics around Life, Sustainability, 2020, 12, 7553; doi: 10.2290/su1218755

About the Author

Sandra Waddock is the Galligan Chair of Strategy, Carroll School Scholar of Corporate Responsibility, and Professor of Management at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA USA. Her research interests include large system change; management education; cross sector collaboration; corporate responsibility; and social and organizational change.

Photo by Echo Grid on Unsplash

The Decline of Neoliberalism – Implications for CSR?

By Steen Vallentin.

“May you live in interesting times” – so the apocryphal English-language expression goes that people often refer to as ‘the Chinese curse’. Times are certainly interesting. Taken for granted notions of what is up and down and left and right in politics are, if not turned on their head then knocked about in confusing and sometimes frightening ways.

The strange (non-)death of neoliberalism … again?

One of the interesting developments in world politics right now is the crisis of neoliberalism as ideology. A development that some will indeed see as a curse, others as a blessing. It is not the first time that neoliberalism has been declared dead or seen to be in its death throes. Many obituaries of finance capitalism and global free trade were written in the wake of the financial crisis. Nevertheless, neoliberalism has shown itself to be remarkably resilient and has continued – in spite of public criticism – to be a dominant force in public policy around the world. Colin Crouch has referred to this recurring trajectory as ‘the strange non-death of neoliberalism”.

However, Brexit (and the election of Jeremy Corbyn as head of Labour) and the movements surrounding Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the United States are each in their own way symptomatic of a turning of the political tide against hyper-globalization and free market capitalism. The benefits of free trade – of goods, services and capital – and outsourcing of labor to low-cost destinations are now being challenged across the political spectrum. Even the Republic candidate for the presidency is questioning, supposedly (who knows with Trump), fundamental tenets of economic liberalism. The crisis of neoliberalism is both an intellectual and a popular one. Leading economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs and Thomas Piketty are among its vocal adversaries, and a public/populist movement is revolting against the crises and rising inequality that are associated with it. Even top economist from the IMF have recently acknowledged that neoliberalism has been “oversold”.

CSR as an embodiment of neoliberal ideology?

These developments, seen in isolation, would seem to pave the way for a political climate  more attuned to the wants and needs of working people and to social values and democratic inclusion (as opposed to solutions based on the supposed workings of the sacrosanct market mechanism). How does it relate to CSR, then? What is the relationship between CSR and neoliberalism?

Arguably, the CSR literature has suffered from a lack of political-ideological self-reflection (and -criticism). Ideological reflection is often left to scholars and others who position themselves as outsiders to the field. As a result, rough and sweeping generalizations tend to prevail. As when critical sociologists and political science scholars suggest that CSR is simply an embodiment or reflection of neoliberalism (because it supports voluntary corporate self-regulation as opposed to government regulation etc.). Critical scholarship of the CMS (critical management studies) variety tend to strongly emphasize the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism as an all-pervasive and suppressive ideology and to stereotype/debunk the CSR literature as a supporter of this ideology.

Locating neoliberalism within CSR: Porter & Kramer on shared value

It is ultimately misleading, though, to think of the CSR literature in total as a reflection of a neoliberal mindset and of CSR promoters as suffering from false consciousness if they fail to realize this. A more nuanced and less stereotypical view of CSR allows us to distinguish between different forms of liberal thinking in CSR and to single out those instrumental streams of thought that more accurately deserves the label ‘neoliberal’. Here, pride of place goes to the strategic CSR/creating shared value approach promoted by Michael Porter & Mark Kramer in their series of influential Harvard Business Review papers. Porter & Kramer effectively subject all social action to the tribunal of cost-benefit analysis and economic value creation. Their approach is supposed to ensure that it is economic rationality and economic measures of worth, and not personal values or fleeting ethical, social or environmental sentiments (as promoted by more or less knowledgeable and qualified stakeholders), that hold sway over proceedings. In their view, shared value represents an internally driven and innovative way for businesses to address social problems and needs in ways that are also beneficial for themselves.

Collective impact – shared value as collaboration

However, a new paper on shared value by Mark Kramer and Marc Pfitzer suggests a softening of the neoliberal rhetoric and an opening toward a more inclusive and democratic approach to responsibility. The core concept here is ‘collective impact’ and the case is made for companies to engage in trust-building and mutually reinforcing partnerships with NGOs, governments and competing businesses as this will provide the strongest basis for dealing effectively with social problems and create shared value. The authors even concede that companies cannot be the backbone of such projects as they are not neutral players; instead, a separate and independently funded staff is called for. Indeed, collective impact calls for a new brand of leadership, ‘system leadership’ that involves multiple individuals from different constituencies leading together.

The new paper has already been accused of intellectual piracy on social media, and it certainly does not excel in terms of originality. Its significance rather lies in its ceding of ground to democratic adversaries in the CSR debate. The paper may be read as a reflection of the diminished self-confidence of purely neoliberal thinking about business and society. Whether or how this ceding of ground will make a real difference in the real world of business remains to be seen. At this time, we can see that a concept (shared value) that is rooted in neoclassical economics and has otherwise been associated with a clear corporate bias is now being presented as a collective, democratic endeavor. It is certainly interesting.

Steen Vallentin is Director of the CBS Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (cbsCSR) and Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School.

Pic by bNation of Change