Integrating Socio-economic and Environmental Sustainability Models:
Further Development and Evolutionary Alternatives
The purpose, or objective, of this paper is to continue to explore the need for and the
development of integrated socio-economic and environmental sustainability management
models, both to improve management practice and to further evolve sustainability management
theory. This integration was first explicated at the International Association for Business and
Society 2013 Conference in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., and in the associated Proceedings (Starik,
2013a). A proto-theory of sustainability management was also recently published in the journal
Organization & Environment (Starik, 2013b).
The present paper updates the socio-economic and environmental justification for the integration
of both types of sustainability models (that is, socio-economic and environmental models) and
highlights two integrated sustainability models included in the citations above. Second, the
paper develops an additional model related to “integral theory”, as the latter has been recently
suggested (Landrum & Gardner, 2012) as an overall management theory, which could be related
to sustainability management theory. Third, several social innovation organizations are
presented as examples of both the existence and practice of this model integration effort and the
possibilities for building on their foundations. Finally, the paper concludes with attention to
limitations, implications, and question for further exploration.
The scope of this paper approaches the sustainability topic from a very broad perspective,
including the realms of both socio-economic and environmental phenomena and their respective
“glocal” and multi-temporal aspects. As such, the paper seeks to describe, analyze, and evaluate
a “connected worldview” in which systemic macro, meso, and micro levels of human decisions
and actions, including those of organizations, are incorporated. Given the space limitations of
this abstract and the subsequent paper, the scope of this effort highlights only a few of the most
salient features and examples of socio-economic and environmental sustainability management
for illustrative purposes.
So, while some observers (e.g. Egri, 1997) have suggested that sustainability may include, for
example, spiritual aspects, this paper does not address those more philosophical matters. Rather,
we concentrate on observable or measurable phenomena and assert that a good place to begin
many sustainability discussions is with so-called sustainability indicators (Bell, & Morse, 2008).
In addition, we accept the general approach of most of the sustainability researchers and
practitioners of whom we are aware that the factors measured by these indicators are changeable
and that making decisions and taking actions that would move those indicators in more favorable
directions is a major rationale of sustainability management.
The methodology employed in the present paper is conceptual, based on a review of the relevant
literature, the logical connection of concepts of interest in patterns, and the identification of
several actual examples which are intended to highlight the concepts, their connections, and their
applications effectively and efficiently. Finally, we employ additional literature and apparent
trends which allow us to suggest related future developments in research and practice.
The “findings” of this paper are the forwarding of new models of sustainability management
that integrate socio-economic and environmental sustainability and that can be further developed
and customized for wide systematic application at multiple levels of human organization.
As we suggested earlier, numerous works, including our own, have previously set out
sustainability management models that have either focused on socio-economic sustainability
(also referred to as corporate social responsibility, corporate social performance, corporate
citizenship, business ethics, and similar terms) and environmental sustainability (with the terms
“natural resources” or “ecological” sometimes substituting for the term “environmental”). Many
dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of definitions have been suggested or the terms
sustainability and sustainable development, but, for the purposed of this paper we use the
commonly accepted English-language roots of the term, which are “sustain” as “continue” and
“ability” as “capacity”, yielding “the capacity for continuing”. In this context, socio-economic
sustainability is the capacity of an entity (individual, organization, or society) to continue to
attempt to realize, maintain, and advance social, economic, and cultural values, and
environmental sustainability is the capacity to continue co-existing with the rest of the natural
environment.
Relatively very few sustainability scholars have forwarded combined socio-economic and
environmental sustainability into single management models. These recent attempts may be only
the initial wave of such efforts, since, if conceptual models are used to any extent in management
decision-making, it appears that their justification is only increasing with time. Two of the most
prominent examples of the need for jointly considering socio-economic and environmental
factors are the continued disruption of Earth’s climate and the increasing numbers of humans in
poverty, associated with ever-widening income and wealth disparities (Brown, 2011).
Regarding environmental climate disruption (that is, human-induced climate change which is
becoming problematic for an increasing number of humans and other species on Earth), human
socio-economic fossil fuel energy production and consumption systems continue to increase the
concentration of so-called greenhouse gases by 2-to-3 parts per million each year, to the extent
that the planet has now surpassed the danger zone of 400 parts per million, by continued loss of
plant-covered (especially carbon-absorbing tree-covered) land, and by increases in Arctic
melting which increases the heat-absorption of surrounding polar bodies of water. This climate
disruption is insidious in that it only marginally increases sea levels but contributes to storms,
flooding, and drought events which are negatively affecting ever-larger numbers of humans and
their local economies, especially those who can least afford such environmental damage.
Climate disruption is therefore a human-inflicted socio-economic/environmental unfolding
disaster. Clearly, socio-economic and environmental sustainability phenomena need to be jointly
considered in the causes of and solutions to climate disruption, and not just at the global level but
at each other level of human organization.
Regarding the other most salient justification for integrated socio-economic and environmental
sustainability models is the ongoing, even increasing crush of human poverty on our planet
exacerbated by ever-widening human inequity. Our customs, habits, religious beliefs, and
general decision dysfunction continue to over-expand the human population by early one-and-ahalf million net births over deaths each and every week! Ninety-five percent of this increase
occurs in developing countries already experiencing severe poverty and inequity. Every one of
this week’s 1.48 million additional humans (including and especially those in developed
countries) will require additional food, water, and waste facilities, among many other
environmental resources. Our species has yet to devise socio-economic and environmental
approaches which can address poverty and inequity, and the related problems of poor health,
poor education, and poor employment prospects. Clearly, if humans are interested in developing
systems, societies, economies, and organizations that promote long-term quality of life, both
socio-economic and environmental sustainability need to be addressed and, if possible
coordinated and integrated with one another.
Of course, the combination of socio-economic and environmental sustainability phenomena has
been “modeled” for several decades, most famously by the Club of Rome in the 1970s
(Meadows, Meadows, & Randers, 1992; Fiksel, 2006). As scientifically sound as these models
have generally been and are today, unfortunately, they have most often only been focused on the
global or regional/continental levels, and generally for policy-makers, academics, and scienceinterested media. And, most notably, (in the view of this paper’s authors), these computerassisted models do not appear to have been very influential even at those levels in assisting
decision-makers to take sufficient action to significantly influence unsustainability directions.
But, our main point here is that, few, if any, combined socio-economic and environmental
sustainability models, computer-assisted or otherwise, have been identified for application at the
inter-organizational, organizational, or sub-organizational levels of sustainability management.
Those at the level of one or more individual stakeholders of organizations, communities, or
societies are nearly non-existent, with most individual sustainability models segmented between
the two types of sustainability and generally evidenced either by lists of “dos and don’ts” or by a
“tack-on” of one or the other types of sustainability.
The first of two integrated models mentioned earlier (Dunphy, Griffiths, & Benn, 2007; Benn,
Dunphy and Griffiths, in press) offered a stage approach in which organizational Human
Sustainability (focusing on employees and community relations) and Environmental
Sustainability proceeded in parallel and sometimes intersecting pathways, with the suggestion
that Human Sustainability (which, in the present paper, would be classified as a “socioeconomic” sustainability model) was found at times to be a necessary antecedent to
Environmental Sustainability in some organizations. One of the several contributions that this
model brings to sustainability decisions is that, over time, socio-economic and environmental
sustainability phenomena can either interact or develop separate approaches.
The second integrated sustainability model advance by Starik (2013a) and Starik & Kanashiro
(2013b) is a multiple systems-and-levels model that expands the Ecological Sustainable
Organization (Starik & Rands, 1995) concept to include attention to strongly, moderately, and
weakly integrated socio-economic phenomena, such as low-income training and employment,
local community business support and reduction of elderly energy bills with environmental
phenomena, such as energy efficiency and household health.
Both of these previously mentioned organizational sustainability models allow for and encourage
significant customization, depending on an organization’s sustainability profile and context. The
present paper continues to develop these two integrated sustainability models and advances an
additional organizational model that was proposed several years ago (Wilber, 2000) and has
recently been associated with socio-economic sustainability, on the one hand, and with
environmental sustainability, on the other (Landrum & Gardner, 2012). This model is derived
from “integral theory”, which was proposed as a way to integrate decision and actions in the
field of human social psychology. This model is typically displayed as four quadrants that
encompass different aspects of human cognition and emotion, and are often described by the
“voice” concept in language, in which the perspectives are “first person” (or I, or “interior
individual”), “second person” (or we, or “interior collective”), third person (it, he, she, or
“exterior individual”), and, third person (its, they, or “exterior collective”), and is usually
forwarded with the acronym AQAL (all levels, all quadrants). Landrum and Gardner (2012)
extended this social psychology model to a discussion of “the theory of the firm” in which they
focused some brief attention to socio-economic and environmental sustainability phenomena in
three of their four AQAL quadrants. A prior related effort by two ecologists (Esborn-Hargens &
Zimmerman, 2009) went much more in-depth on the environmental sustainability aspects of
integral theory, but this approach, too, included some socio-economic factors,. such as aesthetics
and moral values. The present paper assesses this model to identify both ways it can inform the
two previously described integrated sustainability models, and ways those two models might
inform the “integral model”. As one example, while the integral model has some advantage of
intuitive appeal, four quadrants does not seem to be sufficient number to cover multiple
stakeholders (such as employees and the environment) or multiple levels and systems that are
typical in sustainability management.
The third section of the present paper offers several sustainability-oriented organizations and
programs which are well-known to one of this paper’s authors (and all U.S.-based). These
organizations and projects exhibit different sustainability aspects and each incorporates socioeconomic and environmental factors to a different extent. The first organization/project designs
and arranges for the manufacture and distribution of non-motorized wheelchairs that are
specifically made to more effectively be used on the rough outdoor roads, paths, and fields in the
developing world. At one point in its past, this organization/project assisted wheelchair users
and other disables and low-income people in the developing world to setup their own small
manufacturing operations, but, after globalization, it now contracts with larger factories which
are ISO 9001- and ISO 14001-certified. The chairs are donated to developing country non-profit
organizations for distribution to the poor in need and the organization/project works with NGOs
and users themselves as part of disabled persons’ advocacy and human rights programs. This
organization is an example of a primarily socio-economic sustainability entity that has slowly
become more environmentally-conscious, including in its selection of recycled and
remanufactured wheelchair parts.
The other two organizations which are highlighted and contrasted with one another and with the
wheelchair organization/project described above on socio-economic and environmental
sustainability criteria, including their integration, is one which employs low-income seamstresses
who need and want more work to remanufacture clean, used hotel tablecloths into cloth carrying
bags and another which educates low-income individuals to become environmental business
employees and owners. Both these and other organizations/projects, including some “benefit
corporations” and NGOs, are used to illustrate the wide range that can be identified of the
integration of socio-economic and environmental sustainability at the inter-organizational,
organizational, and sub-organizational levels and the possibilities for even further integration.
The last section of the present paper identifies some of the limitations, implications, and future
research directions. The limitations include our collective, on-going learning that is endemic for
a relatively new practice and field (at least at scale) and the overall imperative for management
models to not only be further specified, developed, and tested, but also to be used by
practitioners and built-upon by researchers. The implications include the opportunity to advance
the integration of socio-economic and environmental sustainability for the apparent synergies for
the overall planning and implementation of sustainability organizations and projects (and at other
levels of human organization). The future research directions include more effective and
efficient ways to communicate the need for sustainability model integration and the leveraging of
that integration for a better understanding of how integration can advance sustainability overall.
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