Abstract
While a significant body of literature has highlighted the moral obligations of companies regarding the sustainable use of common pool resources, business activities that contribute to the sustenance of common pool resources remain embryonic. Studies in this area have largely focused on environmental stimuli rather than on the complex motivational structures that drive or hinder businesses’ contributions to common pool resources. We explore the different motives and behaviors of businesses and their contributions to common pool resources, and propose four roles by which companies’ motives and behaviors toward common pool resources can be categorized—namely, free riders, followers, believers, and altruists. We shift the focus from moral reasoning to Platt’s (Am Psychol 28(8):641–651, 1973) notion of social trapping and his “ways out” as Platt’s “ways out” include propositions that address not only environmental stimuli but also companies’ motives. Both types of propositions are important for businesses to be able to respond rapidly to the scarcity of certain common pool resources and to use and maintain common pool resources in a sustainable way. Based on our categorization and Platt’s typology of social traps and “ways out,” we propose a theoretical framework by which companies and other stakeholders are provided with a differentiating perspective that allows for propositions addressing the complex nature of motivational structures and common pool resources. Our framework helps business leaders, institutions, and policy makers decide on actions that can contribute to the sustainability of common pool resources and that differ from actions that solely serve organizational self-interests.
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Notes
The original term used by Samuelson and Buchanan was “rivalry of consumption”; it was replaced by Ostrom and Ostrom (1977) with “subtractability of use.”
“Another example is the decay of railroad service, as people begin to prefer using their cars. As the railroad begins to go downhill, still more people prefer cars. The process is self-accelerating, ending up with no one riding the trains, while there are traffic jams on the highways in which everyone involved would prefer—too late—to be using the railroad” (Platt 1973, p. 642).
Platt (1973) used the Kitty Genovese murder in New York City as an example of a countertrap. In this example, a girl was raped and killed in an alley, with numerous neighbors watching from their homes without calling the police. Platt assumed that the neighbors’ lack of (re)action was due to their fear of the killer’s revenge. “Each observer may have felt a strong prick of social conscience at the time but simply hoped that someone else would make the troublesome phone call first” (Platt 1973, p. 641).
Abbreviations
- UNEP:
-
United Nations Environmental Program
- WCED:
-
World Commission on Environment and Development
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The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper. They are also grateful to Dr. Lepoutre and Dr. Shymko for their for their insightful comments on the paper.
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Gabaldon, P., Gröschl, S. A Few Good Companies: Rethinking Firms’ Responsibilities Toward Common Pool Resources. J Bus Ethics 132, 579–588 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2361-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2361-y