Social Approach: Virtue Ethics Enabling Sustainability Ethics for Business

Abstract

The chapter discusses the theoretical and practical relevance of virtue ethics for developing a sustainable economy and sustainable businesses. Main elements of a sustainability ethics approach based on virtue ethics are highlighted, such as sustainability virtues and the concept of a sustainable person, and the potential of sustainability ethics to provide an ethical underpinning for a sustainable economy and sustainable business is discussed in detail. One focus is on the economic actor as sustainable person who is inherently motivated and enabled by sustainability virtues to act sustainably in complex global business contexts and to systematically relate herself to local, global, and future stakeholders. Another focus is on a virtue ethics-based normative framework for a sustainable economy that considers broader concepts of individual and overall welfare in the context of sustainability. This normative framework integrates the striving for individual well-being and the overall welfare of other contemporaries, future generations, and nature.