EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Seeing the Issue Differently (Or Not At All): How Bounded Ethicality Complicates Coordination Towards Sustainability Goals

S. Wiley Wakeman, George Tsalis, Birger Boutrup Jensen and Jessica Aschemann-Witzel ()
Additional contact information
S. Wiley Wakeman: Stockholm School of Economics
George Tsalis: Aahrus University
Birger Boutrup Jensen: Aahrus University
Jessica Aschemann-Witzel: Aahrus University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2022, vol. 178, issue 2, No 2, 325-338

Abstract: Abstract Sustainability problems often seem intractable. One reason for this is due to difficulties coordinating actors’ efforts to address socially responsible outcomes. Drawing on theories of bounded ethicality and incorporating work on communicating shared values in coordinating action this paper outlines the lack coordination as a matching issue, one complicated by underlying heterogeneity in actors’ moral values and thus motivation to address socially responsible outcomes. Three factors contribute to this matching problem. First, we argue it is not actors’ simple cognitive awareness, but their moral awareness of social issues that explains why certain actors move to address problems while others do not. In other words, actors may recognize sustainability problems, but are not motivated to solve them as they are not understood as moral problems. Second, we posit that progress requires alignment in issues that some actors find worth addressing whereas others do not, thus explaining how heterogeneity in moral perceptions interrupt coordination towards socially important goals. Finally, we propose that progress is undermined if actors myopically focus on level-specific outcomes in ways that elucidates why institutional responses often fail to address individual outcomes and vice versa. We use the existing literature on the socially important issue of food waste to examine our theoretical contribution and develop a typology that explains conditions that inhibit (or promote) coordination. Thus, our work proposes a psycho-structural view on matching and coordination toward sustainable outcomes, highlighting how psychological and structural constraints prevent effective coordination in addressing sustainability goals.

Keywords: Sustainability; Bounded ethicality; Matching; Coordination; Food waste (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-021-04823-2 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:178:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-021-04823-2

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04823-2

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:178:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-021-04823-2