Conceptions of the Business-Society-Nature Interface: Implications for Management Scholarship

This article explores the implicit and explicit conceptions of the relationship between business, society, and nature that are evident in the management literature. The authors derive three conceptions, termed the disparate, intertwined, and embedded views, and consider how they relate to the economic, social, and environmental challenges of our time. It is argued that an embedded view is best able to help us address these challenges, as it infers a holarchical (or holistically hierarchical) perspective of the business— society—nature interface: the notion that the business, societal, and biospheric systems are not only interrelated but that they are most realistically (and therefore most usefully) viewed as nested systems. The embedded view highlights systemic limits and the dependency of society and economy on nature, and it thus provides a logical value ordering to these domains. The authors conclude by discussing the research implications of an embedded view.