The group

This was the first time that this group of people had met, and consisted of researchers and practitioners from the UK, Hungary, Thailand, Singapore and the US. We had gathered together to consider the idea of sustainable business, to inform the current issue of Interconnections, and hopefully give us all some point of action in our own practice and work.

After a period of silent sitting of 30 minutes, we first of all shared experiences of how we had arrived at this place, and what were key turning points in our career. Stories were very different, but what emerged was a shared set of values, despite the different personal histories and cultures that were brought. We also came from different disciplines, some of us working at the macro economic level, some at the level of observational research, others at the practical level of business management, others working hands on with developing communities. This in itself was a highly valuable exercise – to allow time for our personal and professional stories to emerge, so that our dialogue could unfold around exploring more basic conceptual ideas and practices. This in itself is what does not (and indeed cannot) happen at conferences, even small ones with about 40 people. The form itself does not allow sharing to move beyond the papers that people bring with them, and the dialogue stays at the level of more formed ideas. This means that shared reflection and fundamental challenges, collective transformation, which we were endeavouring to create, simply cannot take place.

What is economics and what are the key concepts?

Following from this, we decided we needed to find some common ground in our understanding of economic systems – what are the fundamental governing concepts, and how might we use these in our thinking about sustainable business? Starting then with the basics, we came up not surprisingly with ‘production, distribution, consumption’, and the notion of institutional processes as being the key governing mechanisms of this. We agreed that, however, human processes were also part of this, and needed to be incorporated into our thinking. So we thought, we could consider economics as a system, a way of mapping out the world.

Healthy or pathological?

However, and this was a key point for us, for systems to be sustainable, they needed to be healthy. The capitalist system is manifestly pathological as demonstrated by environmental destruction and resource depletion, inequality and polarisation of income and wealth as manipulated through political power and the media, and growing evidence of financial and real economic instability fueled by speculation rather than production. So we are facing, self evidently, a situation of suffering: we believed that one of the prime conditions for this is the imperative in capitalism for growth, despite the scientific fact that ongoing growth is not possible. Uncontrollable growth of this nature might be compared to the cancer cell – sooner or later it will result in destruction. One of the manifestations and assumptions of this is the idea of competitive markets, and we highlighted as one symptom of this the fact that in Wal-Mart, the largest corporation in the world, employees are encouraged to throw things at posters of their competitors. This too, we deemed to be pathological behaviour, certainly not contributing to overall health.

We realised that all these conditions outlined above are actually systemic: environmental damage and resource depletion derive from growth imperative, as does consumerism, and inequality which comes from the wide separation of ownership and work, winner take-all market system and monopoly/monopsony market structures, with the instability deriving from the credo ‘buy low, sell high’.

Alternatives?

So are there any alternative models we could focus on, and how might these be brought into being? One of the first things we agreed on was that we needed to address the psychology of consumption: this is a mindset encouraged by markets, and we thought that this was one of the reasons that the system was pathological – it is a mindset driven by a sense of lack, of ever increasing dissatisfaction, and therefore never gets met. Consumerism is a product of modern marketing techniques since capitalism has a systemic need to sell things. This psychology becomes embedded in the mindset, and passed on generationally through conditioning such that we do not even realise that we systemically consume what we do not need, but what we think (or marketing makes us think) we want. We discussed how this mindset was created by processes of institutionalisation – we move from ways of seeing the world, to habits and habit energy, that leads us into ways of acting in the world which in its turn becomes embedded in economic institutions.

We examined the notion of the ‘mindful economic citizen’ – one who is both owner, employee, consumer and citizen. We are all these at different times and we wondered whether a process of self-examination at critical moments of habitual behaviour could contribute to an alteration in the pathological state of capitalism. In other words, if every individual took time to consider the implications of their behaviour at any one moment, then we begin to take responsibility for the system that we create and its purpose. This way we could perhaps slowly and collectively address the pathology in the system. Again, we used a systemic understanding that change in one part of the system will lead to change in another.

The Thai sufficiency model

Another example came from the Thai contributors, who showed how the sufficiency models could be considered an alternative to mainstream economics. The Royal Thai Sufficiency Economy model operates on the principles of moderation, reasonableness, self-immunity, wisdom and integrity and was publicly introduced by the King following the 1997 economic crisis, although he had developed it much earlier, and is now championed by the United Nations Development Project. It has succeeded in fostering well-being at the individual, firm, community and regional levels across rural and urban sectors and shows promise in its ability to co-exist with other (capitalist) economic strategies. One of our participants is currently engaged in attempting to introduce these principles in large disenfranchised communities in Uganda.

Reframing traditional economic concepts

Rather than actually changing the models, we wondered whether we could unpack some of these key concepts and reframe them in ways that could reduce the pathology in the system, and foster more sustainable approaches. First, looking at the idea of production – rather than just manufacturing, or the idea of digging into finite resources, we thought that we could think of this more as transformative and creative processes. We could re-shape the intangible ‘capital’ that is inherent in human energy. One of the main ways we could do this would be by fostering relationships both to one another and to the earth that are built on trust and exchange, thus transforming the basis of economic thinking from ‘human capital’ as a resource to be used, to one of mutual benefit. The idea of capital itself could be reframed into one of transforming processes rather than something that needed to be accumulated. Distribution, whether of product or of wealth, could be reconceptualised not as a process of equality, or political conviction, but on the basis of compassion for ourselves and other sentient beings.

Finally, we considered the notion of ‘consumption’ even wondering whether we could dispense with the term completely. Again, we realised that the dominant assumption – that consumption is a necessary evil – could be reframed in terms of life processes. Consumption does not just end with the human. We consume goods and food and so on, but this is constantly recycled. Indeed, the notion of consumption as an end in itself is a product of Western, individualised mindsets, where the external world is considered as a finite and objective resource. We needed really to try and take on board systems thinking rather than considering the human being as the centre of the universe. Again, this took us back to the organic process-driven model, rather than the dominant mechanistic view that organises the world in structures.

With that we turned to the idea of economics as being a set of patterns rather than structures, with models of circular, cumulative patterns of causation rather than linear ones, and we came up with the idea of the spiral as better representing these patterns, containing and transforming energies, rather than using them and wasting them. With these models in our mind, perhaps we could have better research frameworks for tackling problems of climate change and environmental destruction.

This we felt, gave us better ground for attempting to build sustainable communities than imposing models that are developed from within the capitalist framework without clearly looking at the basic assumptions that drive it, which as we had seen earlier, could be seen to be pathological. Changing our mindsets would be a crucial first step in this endeavour, since as we saw earlier in the model of institutionalisation, habits and views become deeply embedded in the institutions that we develop. This threw up the whole idea of responsibility, but with a change of mindset, we could move from a situation of powerlessness (unable to change a globalised system) to an understanding that our actions have consequences and can effect the world we live in. Change one part of the system (our minds) and something happens elsewhere. With mindful intent, then these consequences are likely to be positive, even if we cannot see them.

At the end of the day we wondered how these ideas could best be translated into mindful action (that is mindful of the conditions in which we co-exist), and decided that we would continue our discussion on-line as we scattered to the rest of the globe, with the intent of working on our individual projects, and finding common ground for working for the collective good that may translate into a joint project.

As for the nature of the dialogue, which was interspersed with periods of silence and reflection, we felt that we reached quite quickly levels of depth and interaction that are rare in the globalised world, even in the confines of the classroom. Whilst it would not be appropriate or possible in many situations (such as high level government, or some academic conferences) to share our personal stories or ideas, we felt it was extremely important to be able to mirror and challenge one another at a level that often went deeper than our linguistic structures. Knowing where we all came from, our background, and our own assumptions from the outset saved a lot of time in our discussion. It was also extremely helpful to work with cultures across the globe, with many different assumptions and mindsets, and the ability to surface these so clearly gave all of us an opportunity to develop and change our own thinking. Whilst in business, money is often the symbol of transaction, here we had the possibility of exchanging at much deeper levels, fostering levels of trust and deepening understanding that is critical if we are collectively to co-exist in our different communities. Even in a limited timespan, we were beginning to clarify and expand our own individual and collective ideas, and to add weight, focus and direction to our own thinking.

Bronwen Rees, Director of Centre for Communication and Ethics in International Business, Anglia Ruskin University and founder of the East West Sanctuary.

Joel C.Magnuson, Professor of Economics, Portland Community College, Oregon, US, author of the newly published ‘Mindful Economics’.

Linda Eggleston Nowakowski, Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand, carrying out a Ph.d project finding ways of introducing principles of sufficiency economy into disenfranchised families in Uganda.

Professor Apichai Puntasen, Dean of the Faculty of Management Science, Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand.

Suntharee T. Chaisumritchoke, Department of Social Pharmacy, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, researching into the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry.

Tamas Agocs, Director, East West Research Institute, Budapest Buddhist University, carrying out research projects into the relationship between Buddhism and other sciences including economics and neuroscience.

Titiport Puntasen, Faculty of Social Administration, Thammasart University, Bangkok, Thailand.

Wanna Prayukvong, Faculty of Management Science, Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand, carrying out research into the relationship between corporate social governance and ideas of Buddhism.

Yulianti, Syailendra Buddhist College, Indonesia, researching into Buddhist entrepreneurs

If readers are interested in engaging with this dialogue, please e-mail dr.bronwenrees@ntlworld.com

This section of Interconnections will provide a space for dialogue between researchers and businesses. This will be recorded as part of the Interconnections Blog. For anyone interested in either writing an article, or starting a debate, please check on the webpage.