Understanding sustainability in business through relational biological ethics and the BMSBM

Energy consumption, depletion of natural resources and human induced natural disasters have all conspired to raise the profile of "sustainability", particularly environmental sustainability. The topic is now high on many nations and organizations lists of priorities and central for media attention. Despite the critical importance of such issues it is evident that management thinking often still adopts neoclassical economic views of accounting for and managing environmental sustainability. In this paper, we propose an alternative perspective to managing environmental sustainability based on a broadened model (BMSBM) which not only considers the biosphere in the broad sense but also people as fundamental elements that contribute to the conservation and improvement (or destruction) of the natural environment.