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OBSERVING THE PRINCIPLE “live in a way that enables all others to live as well” means respecting the intrinsic right to life and well-being of all the people and all the things that inhabit the planet. But rights without responsibilities are empty claims. Rights are meaningful only when people meet the responsibilities entailed by those rights.

There are specific responsibilities attached to human rights in all spheres of life and action: the personal sphere, the business sphere, and the civic or political sphere. Observing them constitutes the last, but by no means the least, of the new imperatives of our time.

The responsibilities that face us in the personal sphere of our life are no longer our private business. They are crucial for the outcome of today’s macroshift, and hence they are everybody’s business.

Our common future will depend in large measure on the lifestyle and consumption choices we make today. Fortunately, these choices are not difficult to make; a simple rule of thumb applies again. It is a refinement of the much-cited adage, “think globally, act locally.” Global thinking remains a key element, but the nature of the local action needs to be specified. What one individual does influences others and can spread to the far corners of the world. Therefore, it is not just action, but moral action that is required.

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Hardly anything we do in this world is purely local, and as ecologist Garret Hardin said, we can never do “just one thing.” Therefore, the criterion of responsibility for our actions must be Think globally, act morally.

We have already discussed what moral action means. Now let’s consider the concept of global thinking. Global thinking is not utopian, and it is not reserved for an elite few. It is not thinking in general categories, or in millions and billions, whether of humans, hectares, or barrels of oil. It is thinking in terms of processes rather than structures, in terms of dynamic wholes rather than static parts. Its benefit is not to obtain a catalog of ready-made blueprints for making proper choices in any and all circumstances; rather, it is to acquire the perspective by which we can make wise choices of our own.

Thinking in new and in better adapted ways is a uniquely human capability. In the higher animals basic survival-related behavior remains guided by instinct, and instinct changes slowly through the processes of genetic mutation and natural selection. The dominance of experience over instinct is what distinguishes the rapid cultural evolution of humans from the slower genetic evolution of animals. We can learn from experience, and our conscious assessment of experience can steer our behavior, transcending our inherited instincts. When we learn from the experience of the critical phase of today’s macroshift, we begin to think globally.

Metaphorically, global thinking means seeing the forest and not just the trees. There are cases, however, in which the metaphor also holds literally. One such case is when a person who does not think globally sees only trees—those of the Brazilian rainforest, for example. He sees the rainforest and sees that Brazil’s government is in need of foreign exchange. He also sees bulldozer operators and ranchers in need of work, transporters in need of cargo, hamburger franchises in need of meat, and consumers wanting hamburgers. A globally thinking person sees the whole picture. He sees that the disappearance of trees in the rainforest triggers the loss of topsoil, which leads to changing weather patterns, which in turn lead to advancing deserts and loss of oxygen. He realizes that this creates a vicious cycle that can destroy the rainforests, impoverishing the soils exposed by cutting down the trees, reducing the flow of lumber and beef from the region, making the industries depending on them noncompetitive, and undercutting consumer demand for the corresponding products.

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Global thinking informs the choices we make in the private as well as the professional spheres of our lives. When we choose consumer products for our personal use, do we choose fancy items that use a great deal of energy or simple functional devices that do the job with a minimum of waste and fuss? When we choose our work or profession, do we strive to amass the most money in the shortest time or choose to engage in an activity that is meaningful in itself and beneficial to others? Global thinking also enters into the choice of the style we select for our home: do we want a style designed for ostentation or one that inspires coziness and sociability? How we clothe ourselves and our family is likewise informed by considerations of responsibility: do we dress to be conspicuous and to feed our ego, or for genuine self-expression and to preserve family and community values and our cultural heritage?

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• Seek simple natural foods, materials, and lifestyles, rejoicing in nature and rejecting uncleanliness, waste, and pollution.
• Avoid ostentation in personal appearance, at home and in the workplace, express instead genuine human and cultural values.
• Derive satisfaction from making choices that enhance the chances of life and well-being of other people, whether they live in your immediate environment or in distant places.
• Be careful not to consume in ways that would prevent the options of others to satisfy the basic needs of life and well-being—not just out of a cool calculation of resource availability and ecological carrying capacity but because of a sense of solidarity with your community, nation and culture, and with the global community of all peoples, nations, and cultures.

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Acting in a globally conscious moral way is not difficult, and it does not entail undue sacrifices. When we think globally and act morally, our lives become richer and healthier, and we become better friends and neighbors, less prone to frustration and feelings of guilt. And we have the assurance of thinking and acting as we should, as best we can. More than that no one can ask of us—not, at least, in the personal sphere of our lives.

Thinking globally and acting morally are not the only responsibilities that fall to us. These personal responsibilites are joined by responsibilities in our social and professional spheres. We need to be responsible as managers and collaborators in a business enterprise and as citizens of a country and as members of the global community as well.

Our responsibilities in the business sphere are of particular importance. Business enterprises wield unprecedented power and influence. The top five hundred industrial corporations in the world employ only 0.05 percent of the world’s population but control 70 percent of world trade, 80 percent of direct foreign investment, and 25 percent of world economic output. The total sales of the largest twenty corporations exceed the gross domestic product of eighty of the poorest developing countries. The 1998 sales of General Motors, for example, exceeded the gross domestic product of Denmark, Hong Kong, and Poland, as well as of Norway; the sales of Ford and Mitsui exceeded the GDP of South Africa.

The behavior of business enterprises is an important factor influencing the outcome of today’s macroshift. This behavior is dictated mainly, but not solely, by economic logic. The culture of enterprise defines the mindset of the leading managers and their staff, and it changes with changes in the business environment. Sometimes ahead of its time, and at other times lagging behind, the culture of enterprise is vital both for the enterprise and for the social and ecological environment in which the enterprise operates. The traditional culture is changing: it had profit and growth on behalf of the shareholders as its centerpiece. The premise was that the business of business is business. Well-made products and services sell themselves—and, if not, marketing is there to create demand for them.

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This culture is no longer shared by enlightened managers; additional considerations have emerged. Leading managers place increasing emphasis on the philosophy, identity, and role of their enterprise, and the role and ethic of its leadership. In the culture of leading corporations short-term profit seeking has come to be mitigated by concerns with enduring profitability, and unqualified growth seeking has been replaced with a search for a sustainable share in a variety of markets. Notwithstanding the skepticism of some analysts and investors regarding visionary strategies and values-based organizations, and a hard core of resistance to abandoning the “shareholder value is all there is” philosophy, a shift is under way in the culture of leading enterprises from exclusive concern with customers and shareholders to concern with value and with stakeholders. “Every organization needs values,” said Jack Welch, chairman of General Electric, “but a lean organization needs them even more.” And Ikea chairman Ander Dahlvig noted, “Globalization means stakeholders and responsibilities everywhere.”

Concern with value and responsibility for stakeholders cannot be answered by cosmetic solutions. Clients and customers are getting smarter. They are better informed about product quality, price, availability, and service, and more selective about the companies they do business with. Surveys in Europe show that less than 10 percent of the public believes claims of environmental and social responsibility by companies unless they are backed by tangible evidence. Other surveys in the United States indicate that more than 40 percent of consumers say that, when price and quality are comparable, their choice is influenced by the issues they believe are genuinely important to the companies. Market analyses in both Europe and Japan show that high standards and a commitment to social and environmental issues are key factors of competition in an environment where market success means providing higher perceived value at lower price.

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There is concrete evidence backing up the research results: more and more investment is flowing into companies that are socially responsible, and with good reason. Socially responsible companies have been doing well and are doing better and better. According to the nonprofit Social Investment Forum, 88 percent of the selective socially conscious investment funds with $100 million or more in assets earned top marks for performance from Morningstar and Lipper Analytical Services through the end of 2000—up from 69 percent at the end of 1999. This kind of performance does not escape the attention of professional fund managers. By the end of 1999 some $2.16 trillion was invested in the United States in socially responsible companies, about 13 percent of the $16.3 trillion under professional management.

No longer an idealistic “soft” factor, social responsibility has become a “hard” dimension of enterprise culture. Some global companies have understood this. Unilever, one of the world’s leading users of fish, has hired scientists and developed sophisticated systems to ensure that its fish come from sustainably managed fishing sources; Ikea, a major consumer of wood for furniture, uses the satellite-based information program developed by the World Resources Institute to avoid purchasing wood from endangered areas. Such strategies pay off in share valuation, client and consumer satisfaction, and a healthier and better educated public with higher purchasing power. This is not new. Research by James Collins and Jerry Porras on the habits of visionary companies has shown that a common feature of the most successful companies in the United States for the past one hundred years has been a culture that was entirely value-driven, with a focus on an enduring purpose that had little to do with immediate profit. These factors continue to work today, for example, for Walmart and Mary Kay Cosmetics in empowering the underdog; Ben & Jerry’s and The Body Shop in social and environmental activism; and Merck, Honda, Sony, and 3M in efforts to produce responsible technological innovations.

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Former French president and later president of INSEAD Gis-card d’Estaing pointed out that much greater social cohesion will be achieved if the objective of profit seeking is joined with concern for contributing to the enduring success of the enterprise and enriching the life of everyone who participates in it. This consideration has its place in the business strategies of contemporary companies. The growing number of seminars on the role of corporate management in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and the spate of best-selling management books on the responsibility of business enterprises indicate that forward-looking managers are willing to listen and to act. Doing so is in their own interest: in a globalized economy only responsible companies can lead—or even survive.

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RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD SHAREHOLDERS

• The company meets shareholder expectations without impairing its social, physical, or business environment.
• Annual reporting is provided to shareholders on legal and regulatory compliance as well as on social and environmental initiatives beyond compliance.
• The company’s investment strategy has negative selection criteria for activities that involve undesirable social, environmental, and business practices.
• The company’s investment strategy has positive selection criteria for activities that involve desirable social, environmental, and business practices.

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RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD EMPLOYEES

• The company’s vision and values are articulate to employees with measurable standards of business ethics, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability.
• Employees contribute to the formulation of the company’s vision and values at their level and embody them in day-to-day practice.
• Annual performance evaluations, compensation systems, and career progression criteria fully integrate the company’s vision and values.
• The company is actively engaged in the lives of its employees, learning their concerns, understanding their needs, and contributing to their personal development.

RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD CLIENTS AND CUSTOMERS

• The company accurately represents its products and services relative to their long-term benefits and costs including safety, social consequences, environmental toxicity, reusability, and recyclability.
• The company makes its best effort to educate customers as to the social and environmental desirability of its products and services from cradle-to-grave.
• The company’s innovation and product development strategy shapes the industry toward greater sustainability, social responsibility, and corporate citizenship.

RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD BUSINESS PARTNERS

• The company does not do business with companies that knowingly degrade or otherwise cause significant damage to the environment or behave unfairly toward employees, customers, business partners, or local communities.
• The company offers preferential status whenever possible to business partners evidencing ethical leadership.

RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD LOCAL COMMUNITIES

• The company does not do business in markets or support regimes that violate basic human rights.
• In addition to established corporate giving or patronage programs, the company is actively engaged in the life of its local communities, learning their concerns, understanding their needs, and contributing to their development.
• There is open dialogue between the company and the communities in which it operates.
• Employees of the company are encouraged and given opportunities to devote part of their time to socially responsible activities, doing volunteer work or contributing to the conservation and revitalization of the community.
• The company respects the diversity of the economic, social, cultural, and political conditions in the communities in which it operates.

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RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD THE ENVIRONMENT

• The company complies with environmental regulations and laws.
• The company consistently seeks pollution prevention and waste minimization in its supply chain. It anticipates environmental regulation by taking the initiative in reducing negative impacts on the environment.
• The company establishes its own Environmental Management System.
• The company actively pursues eco-efficiency and de-materialization of its value-added to customers.
• The company is continually designing itself for environmental sustainability, including recycling nonrenewable resources, consuming renewable resources at a rate that allows them to regenerate, and limiting the reduction of bio-diversity.

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Hardly anybody would contest that in the long term corporate and public interests coincide. Every business needs a satisfied public with buying power, and every public needs the products and services offered by a flourishing industry. But business people are fond of quoting Lord Keynes, who once said that “in the long term we will all be dead.” That is true, but today there is an important difference. In a rapidly changing world, time horizons shrink and the long term becomes a matter of only a few years. And in a matter of years we shall not all be dead—but some of us may be out of business. Companies today who fail to care for their stakeholders fail themselves—and tomorrow will themselves fail.

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In the critical phase of a macroshift individual responsibilities extend beyond the personal and the business sphere to the civic and political sphere. All spheres of society influence the outcome of the macroshift, and all spheres must shoulder their share of the responsibility for a positive outcome. This means responsibility on the part of the plain citizen. Even if we do not have the privilege of making decisions in politics, in a democracy we can exercise the power of electing and supporting the leaders who do.

The current responsibility of political leaders is by no means negligible. The effective power of governments has been reduced by the rising power of business enterprises, but national governments remain answerable for the welfare of their people, for their freedom, health, and social and environmental security.

If elected leaders are to meet these challenges, they must enlarge their horizons beyond the traditional sphere of political concerns. In the past, the perceptions of national politicians centered on the interests of their own constituencies. But in today’s world the interests of local constituencies can no longer be fully represented by policies whose scope is limited to the local or even to the national scene. Governments are not required to interfere in the affairs of other states, but they must join forces with other states and their leaders in tackling the problems and challenges they face in common.

Lifting the sights of national politicians beyond the confines of their own constituencies is not a simple matter. The way most democracies work, national leaders, if they are to stay in power, must confine their attention to the few problems that occupy their electorate’s attention. They cannot afford to pay much attention to a host of other issues, even if they are just as important. Action on complex and controversial problems calls for time-consuming public and legislative debate and carries political risks that politicians do not embrace unless they have strong motivation to do so. It is easier and politically more expedient to ignore people who raise issues that do not have the attention of the media and the public, or that lack the backing of influential lobbies and pressure groups, than to champion such politically thankless tasks. In consequence, political action tends to be narrowly focused and neglectful of many of the fundamental issues that shape the contemporary world.

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The political process itself selects against commitment to basic and long-term questions. Ballots carry the names of individuals who for the most part have a taste for power and a high level of competitiveness. Those who prefer cooperation to competition, knowledge to power, and are concerned with long-term issues rarely present themselves for election—and even more rarely are they elected to powerful positions. Economist Kenneth Boulding’s “dismal theorem” states that most of the skills that lead to the rise of political power make those who possess the skills unfit to exercise that power.

Some political figures show a significant level of commitment to the public good and a genuine wish to serve it. But even when intentions are honorable, actions tend to be less than effective. If politicians become aware of issues that are of fundamental importance but are not in the public eye, they can fund studies, make reports, and hold conferences. Unless they receive public approbation, however, they cannot act. Al Gore observed in his book Earth in the Balance, “Ironically, at this stage, the maximum that is politically feasible still falls short of the minimum that is truly effective.”

Effectiveness is further reduced by contemporary nation-states being too big to cope with some issues and too small to deal with others. On one hand, decisions that touch people’s lives, whether through education, employment, law and order, or civil liberties, require decision-making that is closer to the grassroots than the majority of today’s national governments. On the other hand, decision-making in the economic sphere requires a sphere of control and competence larger than that of today’s nation-states. Transborder economies of scale are essential for the efficient exploitation and use of natural resources as well as for the optimum employment of labor and the marketing of products and services.

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The current scope of national decision-making is too small also in regard to territorial and environmental security. National armies can no more ensure the inviolability of a country’s borders than national regulations can safeguard the integrity of its natural environment. Yet the potential for international conflict is growing. Referring to Global Trends 2015, the previously cited nonclassified intelligence report, John Gannon, chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council noted that, although the risk of war among developed countries will be low, there is growing potential for conflict due to national and regional instability. There is a high potential for ongoing conflict in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Caucasus and Central Asia, in parts of South and Southeast Asia, Central America, and the Andean Region. Rivalries between India and Pakistan and China and Taiwan will not end, nor will the antagonism between Israel and the Arab countries cease. Although the global economy will grow, prosperity will not reach all segments of the population. On the contrary, the information revolution will make the persistence of poverty in the midst of affluence more visible.

As the potential for conflict increases, the lethality of the emerging conflicts will increase as well due to the availability of weapons of mass destruction, longer range missile delivery systems, and similar technologies. But purely military solutions will not work. Gannon suggests that in a world of growing conflict-potential governments will have to broker solutions among a wide array of international actors, including not just other governments but transnational corporations and nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations as well.

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National security in the widest sense calls for a significant level of stability in the international community. However, in today’s world security can hardly ever be assured by “sending in the marines.” Assuring national security requires wideranging cooperation among governments and nongovernmental actors along with adequate military defense capabilities.

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If and when defense capabilities are needed, in most cases they can be more effectively mustered by regional defense pacts backed by joint defense forces than by national armies commanded by a single government. In Europe the logic of shifting security from the national to the regional level has been increasingly recognized. It has become evident that persistent conflicts such as those in Kosovo do call for international intervention, but this is best implemented by the region’s—in this case the European Union’s—peacekeeping forces rather than by powers foreign to the region.

Joint peacekeeping has an economic rationale as well. It frees the participating economies from the burden of maintaining costly armies and enables their governments to use the liberated human and financial resources for productive ends. There is no need to maintain an expensive army if a country can assure its internal and external security with smaller expenditures: the former through a well-equipped police force or national guard, and the latter through a regional peacekeeping force. This logic is becoming accepted in some small and relatively prosperous countries, such as the Nordic and the Benelux countries of Europe, but large states remain reluctant to entrust their national defense to collective peacekeeping. The myth of national sovereignty dictates that territorial security should be ensured by the exercise of national military power.

Environmental security is another area where the scope of governmental action must transcend the borders of the given country. The objectives of environmental protection have been extensively discussed and are widely known. They focus on regulations for mining and using natural resources, on safeguarding the balance and regenerative cycles of nature, and on creation of emergency capacities for dealing with environmental disasters and catastrophes. Implementing these objectives is in every country’s vital interest. Every population requires a healthy environment, and every economy needs an assured supply of natural resources.

Yet despite the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the Kyoto Convention, and other projects and agreements, cooperation in the environmental domain remains under-financed and mainly on the level of rhetoric. Only half a dozen countries have levied environmental taxes to discourage the unsustainable use of natural resources and energy, and many governments continue to subsidize clear-cutting forests, strip mining, and inefficient uses of water. With the exception of the ozone-destroying CFC reduction convention (encouraged by the availability of economically viable alternatives), only a handful of governments are prepared to bind themselves to specific environmental goals and targets—most governments consider them an infringement on national sovereignty.

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While the debates go on and statements of principle are negotiated, few substantive treaties are ratified and even fewer are put into practice. As a result, the stock of nonrenewable resources continues to be depleted, regenerative capacities for a number of renewable resources are further impaired, and the overall livability of the environment is depressed. The statistics speak for themselves. The global emission of carbon from fossil fuels is expected to exceed 1990 levels by 49 percent in the year 2010; forests are disappearing (North and Central America have less than a century of forests remaining, the Caribbean less than fifty years, the Philippines thirty years, Afghanistan sixteen years, and Lebanon fifteen years); a third of the planet’s total land surface is threatened with desertification; the atmosphere is heating up; and on average a hundred or more species are lost every day.

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Lifting the sights of national politicians above the borders of their country and focusing them on regional and global economic, political, social, and ecological issues is an urgent step whose time has come. The sovereign nation-state is a historical phenomenon: it appeared on the world scene only at the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sovereign nation-states spread throughout Europe, and in the twentieth century the wave of decolonization following World War II extended them to all parts of the world. Leaders of the decolonized countries objected to almost everything they inherited from their former colonial masters except the principle of sovereignty. As a result, the world community now consists of nearly two hundred nation-states, including economic giants such as the United States, population giants such as China and India, and a plethora of small and poor states such as Guyana, Benin, and the Seychelles.

Decision-making in a world dominated by nation-states is cumbersome, as seen in the experience of the United Nations. Yet there is nothing in the psychology of citizenship that would forbid the expansion of people’s loyalty above the level of the national state. No individual is obliged by his or her emotional make-up to swear exclusive allegiance to one flag only in the conviction that it symbolizes “my country, right or wrong.” We can be loyal to several segments of society without being disloyal to any. We can be loyal to our community without giving up loyalty to our province, state, or region. We can be loyal to our region and feel at one with an entire culture and with the human family as a whole. As Europeans are English, Germans, French, Spanish, and Italians as well as Europeans, and as Americans are New Englanders, Texans, Southerners, and Pacific Northwesterners as well as Americans, so people in all parts of the world possess multiple identities and can develop multiple allegiances to go with them.

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A downward transfer of the sovereign powers of national governments is urgent in regard to education, employment, social security, social and economic justice, and local resource use. But an upward transfer is necessary as well in regard to peace and territorial and environmental security in the widest sense, issues that are unmanageable on the local and national levels. In these areas—as well as in finance, communication, and literacy—the rational step is to selectively transfer national sovereignty to jointly constituted regional or global bodies.

It is not reasonable that the attention of governments should remain centered on narrowly focused local issues while business and finance are globalized and the ecological foundations of our lives are threatened. In a complex and interdependent world, effectiveness and efficiency call for widely networked cooperative structures in politics no less than in business. It is the responsibility of an informed citizenry to elect and support political leaders who are able and willing to enhance their effectiveness by transferring some aspects of national sovereignty downward to local communities and others upward to the international community.

The last but by no means the least of the new imperatives of our time is to accept the multiple facets of the responsibility that falls on our shoulders: As private individuals, we must think globally and act morally. As leaders or collaborators in business, we must care for all stakeholders and for the environment. And as citizens of our country, we must support leaders who recognize the need for locally as well as globally informed and implemented policies.