Competencies for sustainability: Insights from the encyclical letter Laudato Si

Cristina Díaz de la Cruz and Rubén Eduardo Polo Valdivieso

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 2024, vol. 33, issue 4, 606-616

Abstract: This study offers a proposal about which competencies should be fostered in organizations to promote a culture in favor of sustainability in line with Pope Francis' encyclical letter Laudato Si. As a result, seven main competencies are proposed, with their interpretation in the light of the encyclical letter, and some suggestions on how to implement them in organizations are presented. The competencies are systemic vision, critical thinking, capacity for dialog, inclusion, proper use of goods, creativity, and spirituality. In addition, the study offers a discussion of the relevance of these competencies in today's business context. This study offers a novelty with respect to other theoretical proposals on competencies for sustainability since it includes competencies that require an authentic concern for other people and for a vision of the human being open to transcendence, thus breaking with instrumentalism and technocratic paradigm that underlies other proposals. In this way, it also offers a new key to interpreting the integral ecology proposed by Pope Francis, which goes beyond other approaches to sustainability in that it includes not only the person–nature relationship but also the person–person and person–transcendence or person–God relationships. The conclusions of this theoretical research can be especially useful for those who intend to promote a culture of sustainability inspired by the Catholic Social Teaching, also making use of the knowledge and good practices of competency‐based management.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12628

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:wly:buseth:v:33:y:2024:i:4:p:606-616

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().