Marketing and Sustainability: Business as Usual or Changing Worldviews?

5. The Industrial Worldview and Its Presence in Business and Marketing Studies

The dominant industrial worldview emphasizes science, technology, and consumption. It has a strong belief in economic growth, the market, human domination over nature, and faith in technology to solve environmental and other social problems. This worldview is generally espoused by government organizations, corporations, and business studies. The industrial worldview, with its emphasis on scientific and technological success, consumerism, and materialism, has been identified as one of the root causes of our current unsustainability, especially given its dominance over other ways of framing social and environmental concerns.

The call for sustainability to be incorporated into business studies and marketing can be identified within two streams - micro-marketing or macro-marketing. Micro-marketing or managerial marketing usually focuses on how to achieve sustainability within an organization without questioning key issues regarding consumption and economic growth. In such managerial green and sustainable marketing discourses, the consumption of green products and their eco-efficiency is seen as contributing to sustainable development. Therefore, from this perspective, it is up to the consumer to choose to consume green products, an assumption also linked to the notion of consumer sovereignty, levels of consumer knowledge, and the pre-eminence of markets. In a similar vein, corporate sustainability is enacted because there is a 'business-case' for sustainability, or in other words, sustainability issues allow cost reductions, new markets, and competitive advantages to occur. As such, sustainability is defined in terms of companies creating economic benefits, as well as perceived environmental and social benefits.

Conversely, in the macro view, macromarketing, critical marketing, and others in sociology, geography, and tourism studies, discuss the often contradictory and controversial nature of the relationship between sustainability and marketing. This body of research sees the principles of sustainability as fundamentally incompatible with the current business worldview, and thus, business and marketing theory and education. Consumers are seen as constrained by the institutions which govern their actions, whether formal (i.e., pricing structures) or informal (i.e., social norms). Thus, changing product offerings without changing the surrounding structures operates within the dominant paradigm. This transformative perspective advocates for businesses and marketers to change the institutional environment to encourage both sustainable production and consumption. For example, on the micro-level, adopting sustainable practices and only working with suppliers who do the same, and at the macro-level, advocating for policy change (i.e., subsidies and taxation). Furthermore, business models are questioned and addressed, discussing the limits to growth and the profit motive, and encouraging new models based on the sharing economy and social entrepreneurship.

This philosophical and theoretical splitting of sustainability in the business and marketing context is similar to Mulligan's identification of two cultures of business education. The first culture, what he described as the science-based view, or more accurately an engineering view, is more technical in nature and evaluates effectiveness in business. The second culture, a so-called humanities-based view, looks at why or what ought to be. The same cultural split can be seen in business and marketing studies in the context of sustainability, with one stream looking at how a business and marketing can be sustainable (in business itself, by maintaining relationships with customers and using sustainable materials), while the other stream looks at what business ought to be in a sustainable society and questions the very nature of businesses and marketer's role in society and sustainability. Just as moral judgment could not be supported by empirical means, neither can sustainability judgments, and thus, this is where issues of attitudes, values, and beliefs (worldviews) become key means of contention without any real means of settling who's right or who's wrong. Thus, while sustainability usually becomes a practical issue to those in the science-based view, it becomes a moral, value, and inherently political issue (because of the relationship between worldviews and power structures) in the humanities-based view. The following discussion gives an overview of criticisms of the business worldview and its current (in)compatibility with sustainability related issues, such as the environment and ethics.

In the mid-1990s, Gladwin et al. discussed the business school's flawed assumptions of nature and humans. They perceive management as based on a limited flawed theory which is potentially 'pathological' separating humans from nature. Such a worldview places business as a central role in society, justifying issues such as ethics and sustainability in monetary terms. Economic growth is seen as a major priority, which remains relatively unquestioned, but runs contradictory to sustainability as we live on a finite planet. Gladwin et al. propose three differing worldviews in organizational management: ecocentrism (focus on nature), sustaincentrism (interconnection with humans and nature, and balance of environmental issues with social issues), and technocentrism (belief in human separation from nature and technological solutions to environmental problems). A number of scholars therefore argue that an alternative worldview is needed, one based on post-material values, social well-being, and focused on the betterment of people and planet, and the community. Similar calls to arms for marketing have occurred. Overall, Gladwin et al. argue that business theory must remove growth assumptions and move away from quantitative expansion to qualitative improvement. The need to go beyond the economic metrics of success, wealth, and happiness is frequently embraced and is illustrated in work on such concepts as voluntary simplicity and degrowth. Thus, marketing must acknowledge its impact on the natural and social environment but also its potential contribution to demarketing and consumption reduction.

Similarly, Painter-Morland argues that management education has certain ontological and epistemological assumptions that undermine the ability to integrate responsible management education. These ontological assumptions are about calculating well-being and wealth in monetary terms, and a continued focus on self-interest, while the epistemological assumptions are focused on utilitarian objectivism (self-interest as a moral imperative), fact over value (adopting positivist methodologies), and considering only what is measurable as valuable (justification in instrumental terms). As such, the current business worldview is regarded as one which "undermine[s] the most basic tenets of ethics and social responsibility". Accordingly, some have argued that a redefinition about the meaning of wealth, and thus well-being, is needed to successfully integrate responsible management principles.

Furthermore, Springett has been a vocal advocate of the ideological struggle in the business school, especially with respect to integrating sustainability within business education. Overall, Springett views management orthodoxy, based on growth and reductionism, and on market-driven and competition values, as the antithesis to the radical ideas sustainable development demands. She sees management and business education promulgating the industrial worldview, and sustainability as a threat to this "orthodox paradigm of business and business theory". Therefore, ideological critique, critical and reflexive thinking, and active learning in business education must take place in order to effectively address this somewhat hidden ideology. Springett addresses this ideological struggle in the curriculum and suggests courses are needed that consider values, specifically addressing the values and worldviews that have led to sustainability crises, and questions how we can overcome it. As such, it has been suggested that students need to engage with different worldviews of sustainability, so that they can analyze their assumptions about business, society, and the environment, which in turn will challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions. Beyond the education of students, questions remain about how to change this worldview which is ingrained in business schools and thus, faculty, which ultimately effects sustainability education and research.