Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Integrating corporate social responsibility and responsible management is a journey. It can be academic and involve research on the various elements that impact responsible management. It can also involve studying the multiplicity of definitions around corporate social responsibility, sustainability and responsible management. The academic research in this area is dynamic and constantly evolving.
The journal readings suggested in this book are current to mid-2022 and so you are encouraged to keep exploring academic and non-academic literature with a critical eye to the evolution of the terminology that frames concepts supporting responsible management such as corporate social responsibility, sustainability, the triple bottom line, environmental-social-governance (ESG), etc.
Or it can be normatively part of your daily life as you make sense of the expectations of society and the cultural and organizational environment in which you belong. What is it that will promote the survival of the planet and its inhabitants? – since it is unlikely that we will have an alternative planet or alternative environment within these next few generations.
Or the integration of responsible management can be very prescriptive as you integrate the environmental, social, and governance metrics that is described by ESG and demanded by stakeholders; or as you define how sustainable you or your organization is within the framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
One important take-away that you should retain is that there is in fact, no single ideal solution to the problems and challenges that we have created in the Anthropocenic Age but that instead we need to work holistically, systemically, and within our own capabilities as sentient and caring humans, with a sustainability mind-set, to improve lives, and to make things better for the next generation and the succeeding ones – echoing the seventh generation perspective of the Haudenosanee, one of our indigenous stewards of this Turtle island:
“The Seventh Generation Principle is an Indigenous Concept, to think of the 7th generation coming after you in your words, work and actions, and to remember the seventh generation who came before you”1.
Ruben Burga – July 25, 2022
1 https://theseventhgeneration.org/blog-the-seventh-generation-principle/
