Economics and business as if caring matters: investing in our future

Abstract

Purpose

In this time of disequilibrium, old approaches are not capable of meeting our growing challenges. In addition to worrying about customers, employees, products, and services, managers and business owners have to consider matters such as globalization, the environment, instant communications, and technologies once only imagined in science fiction. Not surprisingly, there is a growing perception that we need new ways of thinking about business, economics, and society. The aim of this paper is to address this urgent matter.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper addresses this urgent matter through the lens of an underlying theme of this issue: “care is worthy of investment, policy, and practice because it delivers both measurable results and a more humane world”.

Findings

Offering a perspective that goes beyond the capitalism vs socialism debate, it shows that the failure to recognize the economic value of the work of caring and caregiving has been a major obstacle to more equitable and sustainable ways of living and making a living.

Practical implications

It proposes measures of economic health that take into account the value of care, as well as the large, still generally ignored, contributions of women, who do most of the care work in both market and nonmarket economic sectors.

Social implications

It places economic valuations in their social context from the perspective of two new social categories: the partnership system and the domination system, revealing the imbalanced gendered values inherent in the latter.

Originality/value

It shows the financial value of caring and proposes economic inventions – economic measurements, policies, and practices – that support caring for people, starting in early childhood, as well as caring for our natural environment.

Citation

Eisler, R. (2013), "Economics and business as if caring matters: investing in our future", Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 145-160. https://doi.org/10.1108/13527601311313427