Deep responsibility, SDGs, and Asia: a historical perspective

Although it was only in 2015 the 17 SDGs were adopted by UN Member States, many of the underlying ideas can be found in the strategies of some businesses going back to the nineteenth century. Asia was the home of many of the most advanced concepts of business responsibility for society. They included India business leaders influenced by the religions of the subcontinent, such as J.N. Tata, and Shibusawa Eiichi in Japan, who re-imagined Confucianism as a theory of business responsibility. Jones (Deeply responsible business: a global history of values-driven leadership, Harvard University Press, 2023) has described these leaders as “deeply responsible.” These businesses proved hard to sustain over time, and never became mainstream. It was always individual business leaders rather than multinationals that played a central role. History provides remarkably little evidence that multinationals have been capable of deep responsibility. This remains even more true today in a world where shareholder value maximization is the norm. The most promising path forward is to build on historical traditions of deep responsibility in Asia and elsewhere, reinforced by new networks of values-driven businesses, such as B-Corporations.