”A more sustainable world for all.” Ethics in the claimed environmentalism of business actors

Abstract

Many international business organisations, associations and initiatives claim that they are serious about the thread of environmental degradation and wish to contribute positively. This new awareness is explained to be ethical in nature: to take care of the environment is an ethical thing to do, and concerns business, too. Based on the hermeneutic tradition, this study is an attempt to understand this claimed ethically motivated business environmentalism. Through analysing key texts produced by these business actors, I try to make sense about what is it that ethics has got to do with this kind of business activity. Theoretically, the texts are seen as one manifestation of the exercise of discursive power by business.

The analysis shows that there is lots of ethically colored argumentation in the texts. However, the negative impacts of business activities on the environment are mostly denied, whereas the changing role of business in international environmental politics is overtly emphasised. Business is represented in positive terms, as an active and serious partner, the one to provide the solution needed to solve the environmental crisis. The texts can be understood as a reconstruction of a new, moral self-portrait for business. They are attempts to participate in the on-going debate about the direction to which environmental protection, the world, and business itself ought to be developed. The role of ethics in the texts is mostly that of legitimating: assuring the audience about the good and altruistic intentions of business. However, the texts are diverse and characterised by internal contradictions. In some of the texts there are traces that suggest that ethics is not only used as an instrumentalist means, but as an end in itself. Close contemplation of these texts helps to understand what these influential actors are about and what is it that they are doing in the international arena.