Paying Tribute to the Complexity of Human Beings: A Business Narrative Harmonizing the Well-Being of Individuals and Society

Sustainability might sound like an extensively used buzzword to some. In the business context, companies which report their sustainability activities are sometimes accused of greenwashing. Although research from various disciplines has shown that the image of homo economicus is a myth and a large number of enterprises have recognized the importance of the issue and developed their approaches further—from performing corporate social responsibility measures as an “add-on” to more integrated concepts that do not perceive purpose and profits as mutually exclusive objectives but an integrated “add-in”—the narrative of business as a profit-driven inhuman sector seems to prevail in society. This is of concern because narratives influence our beliefs, emotions, and behavior. In this article, we illustrate that adhering to the story of homo economicus is harmful in multiple ways. Drawing from insights from fields such as business ethics and interpersonal neurobiology, we take a particularly closer look at its negative effects for the well-being of individuals, by exploring different concepts of the self. At the same time, those concepts provide new perspectives such as the relational aspects of an individual’s mental life. By integrating those insights, the paradigm of “all one” emerges and with it a new narrative of and about business which surpasses the mere alignment of individual and societal well-being but rather strives to harmonize the well-being of individuals in a manner that the well-being of society grows out of it.