Sustainability Is All about Values: The Challenges of Considering Moral and Benefit Values in Business Model Decisions

Abstract

Despite indications in the literature about the existence of win-win business opportunities regarding sustainability, most companies are still producing limited social and environmental results that are disconnected from their value propositions. Studies on the rationales underlying decisions regarding sustainability can offer a better understanding of this challenge. In particular, substantive rationality suggests that the decision-making process consider collective values for sustainability. This study investigates the following research question: What are the main challenges of making business decisions based on moral values of sustainable development? Using strategic decisions as a unit of analysis, action research in a start-up environment identified the following business challenges: (1) recognizing the limits of applying the moral values of sustainable development to the current business context dominated by maximization of economic and financial benefit values; (2) recognizing the normative nature of sustainability goals, which implies that moral values related to sustainable development are still external and not naturally occurring in people’s personal moral values; (3) addressing conflicts between moral and benefit values and between collective and individual goals when including substantive rationality in business decisions; (4) engaging business stakeholders according to their personal moral values, as people are value driven; and (5) engaging workers in sustainable development values, as they play a central role in enabling benefit value creation for sustainable development. The paper offers interesting insights into moral value and benefit value. The former is the basis for individual decisions, while the latter represents benefits created by business models. Both concepts have been separately investigated, but this research delimits and differentiates them. Future studies can further investigate decision rationalities to enable sustainability in practice, as this is usually a theoretical discussion. Research on other start-ups and more mature organizations can also provide interesting insights.