David Bevan

As the editors of this volume write in summary, capitalism remains an efficient and effective producer of human wealth. Competing with such necessarily thin, portmanteau definitions, a systems thinking approach suggests that capitalism is alternately a complex adaptive system itself fully integrated with—if not structural to—global, contemporary human society. As such, it is susceptible to criticism on account of increasing and disparate income inequalities; an array of unaddressed crises in climate change attributed to ‘free’ industrialization; a one-size-fits-all to commercial organizations; as well as institutionalized racism, sexism, multiple additional forms of categorical discrimination, and widespread corruption. In the face of such polemical processes, a question arises as to what is the future of this global capitalism as it spreads throughout the planet? In this paper we discuss three possible scenarios for the future of global political economies. We imagine: firstly, the spread of Western models of capitalism will continue, largely unabated, despite any flaws. Secondly, that the world might experience a violent revolution and an interruption to this sort of enterprise, with an emergence of neo-Marxism, or some equivalent anarchy. And/or, thirdly, the future of viable forms of free enterprise rest in the reformulation of this model as a set of social imaginaries lodged specifically within, and operating in conjunction with local mores, norms, and social frameworks, each of which might produce a unique form of enterprise. To contextualize this discussion, we begin with a foreword offering a review of the structural significance and agency of the imaginaries, that tend to dominate the discourses on this topic in the field of business ethics; and by advancing a summary of conditions that we consider as indicative, significant and structural for any possible analysis or paradigmatic reformulation exercise. To that extent this article is an original and speculative position paper drawing on, reviewing, and interpolating existing literature. Empirical evidence illustrates two of the contrasting imaginaries in the interests of clarity.

Werhane, joined by her co-author David Bevan, argues that Smith was not, as some have thought, a radical individualist allegedly eschewing social relationships as sidelines in our individual development. Referring to texts in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the authors demonstrate that according to Smith, “we are utterly social by nature and indeed, cannot manage without one another” (Bevan and Werhane 2015, p. 331). Without extensive social interactions each of us would be mute and we would have no sense of ourselves as individuals. Smith contends that as human beings we develop our personalities, our values and ourselves as conscious moral beings only when we have social contacts with others. This “inexorable sociality,” as the authors call it, allows exchanges and self-development out of which emerge our consciences. But the conscience is not merely an inevitable outcome of sociality. It emerges when each of us realizes that we are more than how others see us. We then begin stepping back from our social selves to act as impartial spectators of our own behavior and values as well as those of others.Original publication: Bevan, D. & Werhane, P. “The Inexorable Sociality of Commerce: The Individual and Others in Adam Smith.” Journal of Business Ethics (2015) 27.2: 327–35. ©2015 Reprinted with permission.

In this paper we set out to explore the claims that corporate social responsibility (CSR) itself is little more than a complementary extension of the project of coloniality initiated by the Enlightenment (e.g. Banerjee 2019). We will not dispute that claim. Rather we will develop three points. First, we will apply a non-linear, systems approach to demonstrate how we all, of any color, ethnic origin or historical location are all part of an interconnected interrelated sets of systems—what some thinkers call a complex adaptive system or systems (e.g., Miller and Page 2007) so that dismissing or degrading any particular ethnic, gender, or racial group is dismissing part of our history and origin. Secondly, we will argue that Enlightenment, coloniality, as well as neo-coloniality, and decoloniality sprung up from the Enlightenment projects themselves. Thus, the very critiques of Enlightenment, accurate as they may be, evolved from that perspective and have to be taken into account even in those critiques. Third, what appears to be an “either-or” – that is, that commerce should stick to business and not engage in political activities (forms of neocolonialism) or accept these business-political activities despite critiques – is not a simple choice. Rather, conceding that commerce and political systems cannot be nicely separated, we will provide some principles or ways to evaluate these activities, seemingly ubiquitous particularly in emerging economies.