Responsible Innovation and the Innovation of Responsibility: Governing Sustainable Development in a Globalized World

Christian Voegtlin () and Andreas Georg Scherer ()
Additional contact information
Christian Voegtlin: University of Zurich
Andreas Georg Scherer: University of Zurich

Journal of Business Ethics, 2017, vol. 143, issue 2, No 2, 227-243

Abstract: Abstract Earth’s life-support system is facing megaproblems of sustainability. One important way of how these problems can be addressed is through innovation. This paper argues that responsible innovation that contributes to sustainable development (SD) consists of three dimensions: (1) innovations avoid harming people and the planet, (2) innovations ‘do good’ by offering new products, services, or technologies that foster SD, and (3) global governance schemes are in place that facilitate innovations that avoid harm and ‘do good.’ The paper discusses global governance schemes based on deliberation as a means to foster such responsible innovation. These schemes can provide voluntary soft-law regulations that complement and extend national and international hard-law regulations and facilitate collective innovation that contributes to SD goals. The article addresses the facilitative role of governments and international organizations in overcoming problems of deliberation and offers illustrative examples of such governance schemes.

Keywords: Responsible innovation; Global governance; Globalization; Political CSR; Sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (89)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-015-2769-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:143:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-015-2769-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-015-2769-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().