Value Creation for a Sustainable World

Value creation in the Anthropocene must contend with balancing wellbeing of humans with the wellbeing of other species, nature, and planetary ecosystems. The Anthropocene is characterized by the accelerating and devastating impacts of human economic, social, and cultural activities on Earth systems.

Today an increasing number of business models claim to be sustainable despite the environmental, social and economic problems that, far from improving, are in fact getting worse. It seems impossible to reach the objectives described in UN’s sustainable development goals (SDG’s) without making deeper changes in the dominating economic paradigm which is based on and driven by profit maximization and promoting economic growth.

In this chapter, we advocate that implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a significant way of realising the creation of value by business for a better and more sustainable world. We propose a virtuous cycle between SDG implementation and the establishment of a social contract, enabled by trust. Some examples of value creation through the triad of SDG implementation, the social contract, and trust are provided. In these instances, we show that business may act directly or through the contexts in which it is embedded to address the SDGs.

How can we deal with climate in sustainable development? The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are proposed by the United Nations as important visions for a sustainable future for humanity. How does this relate to business ethics and corporate social responsibility in sustainable development? This chapter analyzes the vision, mission, and strategy and production of the Danish renewable energy company Ørsted that transformed from being the Danish Oil and Natural Gas Company (DONG) to be an offshore wind energy company relying entirely on producing renewable and green energy. Ørsted is an energy company that implements values-driven management and SDGs in practical business. Here, sustainable development is integrated in the function, meaning, and aim of a business organization. Looking at different strategies for creating values and values-driven management, Ørsted relies on a strategy of transformation towards sustainability through a competitive business strategy of being the best energy provider through production of green and renewable energy. This strategy can be defined not only as “creating shared value”, but rather in a deeper sense as “shared value creation”, where the company considers itself as a part of a more sustainable future for business and society. With Ørsted we see an effort to make sustainability for business and society a key dimension of the business model of the company. In this chapter, we will look closer into the business model for creating shared value and shared value creation of Ørsted as a key contributor to sustainable development, zero-carbon emissions, and a future with control over climate change on the globe.

Humanity has not been able to operate a sustainable food system globally. Radical transformation in society and the economy is needed to make food production serve the well-being of all human and non-human stakeholders while respecting planetary boundaries. This paper reviews the literature on the problem of food production in the Anthropocene. It then explores how a business enterprise might also serve as a social movement and the way in which the interaction between the two can create sustainable value. The case of Green Monday, a social movement and start-up group selling plant-based food, established in Hong Kong and promoting low-carbon emissions, sustainable lifestyles, food security, and animal welfare is presented and examined. The case study provides some valuable insights into how the collaborative actions of a social movement and a related business organization can help to meet real human needs and contribute to preservation and regeneration of nature.

This chapter discusses the role of local culture in creating sustainable value for a destination. Ordinarily, researchers consider three dimensions of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental. The social sustainability dimension usually includes culture. Some researchers, however, believe culture should constitute a fourth dimension; this is the topic of this chapter. In this chapter we investigate a case study of a 400-year-old winter market in Jokkmokk, Sweden, examining how Indigenous culture affects the value of sustainability for tourists. Tourists who visited the market are interviewed about what they consider valuable both on their current visit to the Market and on possible future visits to the area. In particular, they are asked what they would wish to experience if they returned to the location at another time of the year and the Market was not their main reason for visiting. The chapter discusses the role that culture plays in sustainability and how value is created in a sustainable way during the Jokkmokk Winter Market. The results demonstrate that the Indigenous Sami culture constitutes the principal attraction for visiting the locale both during the Winter Market and at other times of the year.

The dominant and conventional corporate model and global trade have created massive market-driven social changes globally, often characterized as a ‘race to the bottom,’ exploited vulnerable producers, reduced biodiversity, polluted the environment, and led to dangerous climate change. Here, we present innovative approaches that are examples of new business models. First, the Fairtrade partnership model is described and compared with the Bottom of the Pyramid model. We have selected their work in Norway as a concrete example of how national Fairtrade organizations are working to increase the consciousness and competence of responsible buyers. We then present the case of illycaffè, an international company that sells coffee-related products in more than 130 countries. The company has developed genuine partnerships with local coffee producers and claims that it is better than Fairtrade because of its focus on quality. One of the challenges with the Fairtrade model is the need for more holistic solutions to ensure living wages for farmers and cooperatives in the South. One means of making the required changes is the enactment of laws. The Transparency Act in Norway has real potential for remedying the violation of human rights and environmental degradation in the industry.

Since the early twentieth century, clothing has become mass-produced, the result of technological advancements, the rise of international trade, and the transformation of retail systems. The ecological and social effects of the highly globalized fashion industry continue to be increasingly destructive. Common industry practices are indifferent to ecological integrity, social justice, and animal welfare as a result of the materialistic value orientation. Given the challenges of the Anthropocene era, a holistic and sustainable approach to fashion is required. This study provides an overview of the ecological consequences of the fashion industry and introduces the concept of vegan fashion. Designers, manufacturers, and fashion brands can have a significant effect on the consumption behavior of consumers. A growing number of aspiring garment brands have adopted the concepts of vegan fashion. By replacing the mainstream materialistic value orientation and unidimensional profit-maximizing business approach with ethical business models, these companies can reduce their ecological footprint to a great extent. The paper also aims to qualitatively study how Miomojo, an Italian fashion brand, reduces ecological destruction and suffering to animals by applying the principles of veganism to fashion. The Bergamo-based company produces solely cruelty-free fashion products which exclude animal components. The paper provides an alternative vegan business model for fashion brands to combat the ethical and ecological challenges of the Anthropocene.

This research investigates place-based maker enterprises, delineates their practices through the lens of sustainability, and explores the potential of design to support their long-term development. We conducted field research in three distinct regions of the world: Santa Fe in the Southwestern United States, which is renowned as a major centre of traditional crafts; Cumbria in Northwest England, where a number of traditional but endangered craft enterprises are located; and the Yellow River Valley in Central China, where UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention plays a significant role in regional and national support of traditional practices. We carried out over 50 in-depth interviews with makers, enterprise owners, and craft-related support organisations. Key findings from case studies in different regions include (1) connections to place and the values and motivations of the makers or enterprise owners, (2) strong connections between craft making practices and sustainability; (3) a variety of business models for aligning the enterprise with sustainability; and (4) potential opportunities for designers to contribute to maker enterprises. From this information and its analysis, a practical ‘located making framework’ is developed for supporting sustainable development in small-scale maker enterprises.

The acronym ENVIENTA comes from ENVIsioning & ENcouraging Technological Alternatives and was co-created by a group of designers, which gradually transformed into a self-organizing commons of volunteering experts. They envisioned a digital platform promoting “open source everything”, including hardware. ENVIENTA model facilitates the amalgamation of global knowledge sharing with the local provision of goods and services while minimizing the producers’, consumers’, and innovators’ environmental footprint. Such cosmo-localization allows local economy development built on regenerative models, which by deploying digital technologies enhances the autonomy of both communities and individuals. The proposed concept facilitates the localized fulfilment of genuine needs with personalized products and services and life quality improvements, leading to a consequent reduction of environmental footprints and an enhanced care for natural resources. Its effective implementation requires the consequent combination of the innovative enactment of cutting-edge digital technologies, social innovations, and regenerative business models. ENVIENTA aims to enhance mutual trust and its feedback with the interactions and relationships of cooperative dynamics. This pattern can emerge and operate in an inspiring environment characterized by the institutional (dual) primacy of acceptance of interdependence and non-zero-sum game approach.

Gender inequality continues to be a huge contribution to social inequality in our contemporary world. Recent research shows that organizations can either reproduce inequality (in all its forms) or reduce it. In this chapter, we address social and gender inequality as a global lack of Integral Human Development (IHD) with a particular focus on the latter. In this light, we bridge IHD and feminist ethics perspectives to provide a model of intersectional organization in business ethics studies. We use the case study of a female digital entrepreneur, Cristina Fogazzi, founder and owner of Veralab, a fast pace growing Italian startup soon become a top leader in the sector of skin care, who successfully engages in fighting gender inequality while ensuring economic profitability and environmental sustainability. We contribute to the extant literature by identifying the construct of intersectional value creation. The latter is discussed consistently with findings showing coherence between Fogazzi’s messages to her audience and internal organizational governance, as well as between internal and external stakeholders’ engagement. Both messages and engagement strategies are based on female inclusion and emancipation goals. Second, the case shows exceptional commitment to tackle all constitutive levels of human wellbeing within the Integral Human Development paradigm (moral, psychological, and physical), thus allowing us to discuss Intersectional Value Creation as an IHD model with a specific focus on intersectionality. Through this work, we explore how business organizations can fight gender inequality understood in its intersectionality dimension on all IHD levels.

This chapter contrasts Communities Economies with Growthism, two radically different approaches of value creation and ways to organize economic activities. Growthism drives the institutionalization of privately appropriable rents and profit generating arrangements, often with little regard to ecological sustainability and genuine human needs. In this context emerge organizations and networks as vehicles of collective self-defence applying the principles and models of Community Economies. These principles and models are illustrated by two case studies: Health in Harmony is an international non governmental organization (NGO) operating health clinics in Indonesia, Brazil, and Madagascar with the aim to save rainforests by helping local villagers to adopt livelihoods not dependent on illegal logging; and Sustainable Food Network, a hypothetical system of consisting real-world organizations aiming to produce food through ecologically sustainable and socially just methods. Community Economies arrangements favour the provisioning of genuine social needs instead of profit making, prefer resource sharing over commodification and enclosures, allow other-than-monetary ways for human interactions, cultivate participatory practices based on flat hierarchical relationships, strive for material sufficiency, seek nonviolent technological solutions, and prefer common property ownership design. Community Economies are autonomy supporting social arrangements, characterized by providing opportunities to meaningfully contribute to the betterment of the individual or the household through the betterment of the community; in these environments people can experience and practise a wide range of prosocial activities.

The late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej (1946–2016) formulated the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP). “Sufficiency” means balancing reasonable moderation in production against the need for protection from sudden internal and external shocks. SEP follows the “Middle Path” as a guiding principle for all classes of society and government. Knowledge, thoughtfulness, prudence, and ethical integrity are essential to achieve the Middle Path. The paper explores the use of SEP as a method of social innovation for enhancing delivery of public services and for localizing the process of sustainable development. Such innovative use of SEP is illustrated by three exploratory case studies of local government in Thailand. The first case shows how a local administration built a program to produce renewable energy (household cooking gas) from pig farm waste while earning revenue from carbon credits. The second case involves a local administration setting up a community welfare fund to reduce the inequality of people who had not received a basic income. Finally, the third case is about a local administration encouraging residents to build their own recycling project rather than waiting for top-down government action. All three local governments have mayors with significant entrepreneurial abilities, useful in teaching entrepreneurial action to residents, government staff, and other local leaders. Together, these cases show the potential of SEP as a method of bottom-up social action for sustainable development.

Today most countries and cities follow policies that strive for competitiveness, economic growth, and wealth creation. However, this uncritical pursuit of mainstream economic dictates is producing considerable “ills” in the Anthropocene, including climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and national and global inequalities. The current paper presents some of the leading alternative approaches of countries and cities that focus on creating wellbeing in a broad socio-ecological context. The emerging wellbeing focused policy framework includes the Gross National Happiness of Bhutan, Costa Rica’s National Decarbonization Plan, the Wellbeing budget of New Zealand, and the “doughnut economy” of Amsterdam. The wellbeing policy framework abandons the idea of GDP-centered economic growth and directly targets human wellbeing and ecological regeneration. It implies encouraging economic and business activities, and programs that create socio-ecological wellbeing and discouraging or even punishing activities and programs that create illbeing for people and the Earth.