Envisioning an ecologically sustainable society: An ideal type and an application.

Rands, G., B. Ribbens, D. Casagrande, and H. McIlvaine-Newsad (2007)

Pp. 22-59 in S. Sharma, M. Starik and B. Husted (Eds.), Organizations and the Sustainability Mosaic: Crafting Long-Term Ecological and Societal Solutions, Edward Elgar Publishing

abstract

Sustainable development is becoming more acceptable as a social goal. What a sustainable society might be like, or how it might be created, however, remain elusive and vague. It is generally accepted that such a society must be based on widespread adoption of activities that are sustainable in economic, environmental and social terms. Organizational concepts of sustainability have tended to focus on the environmental aspect. For example, a multi-level, multi-systems based model of ecological sustainability applying to organizations was developed by Starik and Rands (1995). This basic framework can be modified and applied to the level of societies. Doing so requires attention to social aspects of sustainability. In this Chapter we review the concept of sustainable development, and suggest that sustainability requires not only economic, environmental and social considerations , but cultural and 'managerial' ones as well. We re-examine the Starik and Rands model, explicate more fully its basic assumptions, and develop an analogue of it at the societal level. We discuss how this model might be used to develop an ecologically sustainable society in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.