How do you get credit for your good deeds? A 2015 paper considers this problem. The authors suggest that informing people of your good deeds can backfire. People attribute impure motives to anyone who draws attention to their good deeds. A similar issue occurs for companies. So, should firms advertise their good deeds? A Moral…
Category: Sustainability
Will Consumers Actually Pay For Sustainability?
There are many ways that sustainable business can be financially successful. One of the first things that comes to mind is that consumers might be willing to pay more for products that are produced in a responsible way. Most consumers would prefer their products not to be made by child labor or to pollute the…
Does Doing Good Generate Loyalty?
One of the big questions in sustainable business is whether doing good can actually pay. This is often really tricky to establish. In an ideal world, we can run an experiment where we randomly assign some companies to do bad stuff and other identical companies to do good stuff and see what happens. Obviously, we…
Effective And Strategic Altrusism
A few years ago William MacAskill was all the rage. His effective altruism movement was riding high. Many of the rich and powerful endorsed his views. Things have gone off the boil a bit since. So, with an eye for being behind the trend today I’ll look his Doing Good Better ideas. I’ll also set…
Win-Wins Are Good For Stakeholders
A theme I see in some writing about sustainable business is that we need to get beyond win-wins. Although I get the point — business cases won’t deliver everything — I worry that this isn’t the right message. Win-wins are good for stakeholders, and we haven’t found all the win-wins yet. As such, I’m not…
A History Of Conservation
Michelle Nijhuis has written a history of conservation, Beloved Beasts. There are 1) many interesting characters and 2) fascinating ideas concerning species and their preservation. Unfortunately, these two features of the book seemed to conflict to my mind. The stories of the colorful characters’ lives kept getting interrupted by digressions about ideas. Still, none of…
Owners Often Care About Beer, Housing, God, And National Identity
Milton Friedman’s idea that owners of, and managers at, companies should only care about the owner’s wealth is pretty odd when you think about it. Owners have long cared about much more because they are human beings. A book on the Guinness family suggests owners often care about beer, housing, God, and national identity. What…
Being Fair To People You Don’t Agree With
Being fair to people you don’t agree with is a really challenging task. After all, from your viewpoint, they are wrong. It can be pretty easy to see the holes in their arguments. Indeed, we can be really great at that. Although we are generally not so talented at taking apart our own arguments. When…
Time Prices Are Useful But Not Everything
Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley have a book, Superabundance. This discusses how prosperity has increased and what this means for pessimistic views of the world. The book is published by the Cato Institute. This is a right-wing think tank in the US, although the institute did not endorse Donald Trump’s view of the US in…
Is It Marketing? Who Cares?
Women traditionally face disadvantages in business. These can be especially pronounced in some societies. There is good reason to want to change this, not least the moral argument. That said, it is often helpful to go beyond the moral argument. What impact does empowering/hiring female micro-entrepreneurs have on society? Is it a zero-sum game, where…
