Business & Nature

Business is encapsulated, not just in society but in nature as well.  All business actions and traits—such as the pursuit of profit, the hierarchical organization, competing with market rivals, technological innovation, and executive decisions—are a function of natural evolutionary processes enabling the firm to adapt and survive (or not) in its ecological niche.  This perspective seems at odds with the conventional explanation that business is a function of human culture, as presented in the Business and Society section.  Truth to tell, both views are correct.  No clear dividing line, except a chronological one that grants priority to nature, separates human culture from nature; each plays a part in shaping and channeling human actions, including business operations.  As the following works maintain, human culture itself is an adaptive form of natural evolutionary process.  Nature provides the genetic, neural, biological, physical, ecological foundation on which human cultural behavior is elaborated.

The values that motivate business actions and that create the moral dilemmas of the modern corporation—and subsequently for human society as a whole—arise from the intersections where nature and culture overlap.  My views are set forth in the items that follow:

“The Corporation: Nature’s Black Box”
(Corporation, Be Good! The Story of Corporate Social Responsibility)

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