Foundational Memes for a New Narrative About the Role of Business in Society

Sandra Waddock ()
Additional contact information
Sandra Waddock: Carroll School of Management

Humanistic Management Journal, 2016, vol. 1, issue 1, No 6, 105 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper argues that memes form the basis of our cultural narratives, and that today’s dominant memes need to dramatically shift to contend with the realities of growing inequality and climate change, which could pose existential threats to humanity. The paper offers a potential set of memes that could be used to develop a business and economic narrative that allows for inclusiveness, wellbeing and dignity for all, while still emphasizing a prosperous business community but not allowing it to dominant societal thinking. New memes proposed focus at the societal level arguing that societies (and businesses) are deeply intertwined with nature, that goals should emphasize wellbeing and dignity for all, defining ‘wealth’ as collective value and dignity as reverence for humans, living beings, and Nature itself. Relevant capitals are multiple, including economic/financial, human/intellectual, social/relational, natural/ecological, and spiritual/reverence. Core values include freedom and democracy within constraints of dignity and an ecologically sustainability social contract, creating ‘fair’ markets, ‘glocal-ism,’ both private and public goods, and collaboration combined with competition. Governments play important roles in setting fair laws and regulations and business’ purpose becomes maximizing aggregate wellbeing within ecological constraints without dignity violations.

Keywords: Memes; Wellbeing; Foundational economic narrative; Economic values; Sustainabilty; Dignity; Narrative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41463-016-0012-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:humman:v:1:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s41463-016-0012-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41463

DOI: 10.1007/s41463-016-0012-4

Access Statistics for this article

Humanistic Management Journal is currently edited by Michael Pirson

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