Business and Sustainable Development

Citation

Ingram, H. (2001), "Business and Sustainable Development", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 267-268. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2001.13.5.267.2

Referee’s comments

As the human race lurches into the third millennium, more searching questions are being posed about our stewardship of Planet Earth. We are regularly subjected to warnings of ozone depletion, global warming and climate change that may have profound effects for our children and us. This environmentalist movement has gathered strength, championed by high profile “eco‐warriors” and spawning a lexicon of new words and phrases such as “biodiversity”, “greening” and “social accounting”.

These issues have also affected the hospitality and tourism industries. The fragility of ecological and economic systems affects the long‐term sustainability of tourism environments, especially where tourism usage is high. Paradoxically, the most fragile environments are often the most popular, and therefore the most at risk. In hospitality, too, there are moves to persuade operators that eco‐friendly measures can save both resources and costs. For example, the HCIMA supported “Hospitable Climates” initiative suggest that hospitality businesses can utilize “energy measures that don’t cost the earth”.

In this book, the business case for sustainable development is presented by Starkey and Welford, academics from the University of Huddersfield. They have based the chapters on journal articles from well‐respected academics and industry experts. As such, this is a collection of ideas and arguments and, although some seem dated in this fast‐paced arena of debate, it is useful to have them in one single resource.

The editors structure the book in five sections – overview, business opportunities, environmental and social accounting, critical perspectives and trade and sustainable development, finishing with conclusions. Although an eclectic mix of sometimes contrasting viewpoints, the guiding hands of Starkey and Welford are always in evidence, offering interpretative introductions at the start of each section, as well as in the introduction and conclusions.

The overview sets the scene, suggesting that the book’s theme was prompted by the opening chapter, Stuart L. Hart’s Harvard Business Review article in 1997, entitled “Beyond greening strategies for a sustainable world”. John Elkington reinforces this with an argument that sustainable development can provide the “triple bottom line [benefits] for twenty‐first century business” (economic, environmental and social). Section 2 considers the business opportunities generated from the environmental agenda in which capitalism seems the only credible paradigm. The third section introduces the concepts of environmental and social accounting and the need to balance financial, ethical and social imperatives. These concepts are defined, described and unpacked in four chapters that inform and debate techniques for social accounting. Section four presents critical perspectives on sustainability, arguing that big business has used its position of power to obstruct environment and social improvement. Questions are asked about the role of regulation as a counterweight to corporate power and relationships between business and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs). Can business behaviour be tempered by the limited power of civil legislation and more effectively by NGOs as the expression of “consumer politics?”. Section five looks at the current global trading system, and the passions that it can arouse as to whether it is a source for good. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the body responsible for overseeing international trade and maintaining the status quo, arguing that the current systems are better than none at all. In the two chapters in this section the complex issues raised by stakeholders both large and small are even‐handedly presented, supplemented by useful case studies.

In the conclusions, Starkey and Welford endorse Jonathan Porritt’s analysis that the world’s problems are caused by “greed and selfishness and lack of compassion”. They suggest that Buddhist principles of caring consideration could result in a more sustainable planet, but that this poses a fundamental question about the ultimate purpose of business. This might be stretching corporate idealism too far.

In summary, this is a thought‐provoking book in which many ideas and issues in sustainable development are presented, compiled and expanded. There is, at present, a huge gap between current practice and the idealistic and optimistic solutions presented in this book. Nevertheless, these views represent a groundswell of opinion that is becoming ever louder.