Sustainability is everywhere in business language, yet its purpose remains unsettled. Is it about limiting damage, or about supporting the wider conditions that make life possible in the first place? Revisiting foundational debates in business ethics, Assoc. Prof. Frederik Dahlmann from Warwick Business School asks what changes when sustainability is framed not as balance or trade-off, but as the pursuit of life.

Sustainability beyond Trade-Offs: Reframing it as the pursuit of life by CoBS Editor Hari Chandana Chinni. With kind acknowledgements to Frederik Dahlmann. Related research: Dahlmann, F. Conceptualising Sustainability as the Pursuit of Life. J Bus Ethics 196, 499–521 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05617-y

For decades, sustainability research in business and ethics has revolved around a persistent and unresolved question. Should sustainability be understood primarily as the protection of ecological systems, or as the continuation of human development? Despite the widespread adoption of sustainability language in corporate strategy and public policy, this tension continues to shape how sustainability challenges are defined and addressed. Frederik Dahlmann’s paper enters this debate by proposing a reframing of sustainability as the pursuit of life.

What makes this paper interesting is that Dahlmann isn’t trying to pick a side or stitch together a compromise between human-centred and nature-centred views. Instead, he treats their ongoing friction as revealing something important about why sustainability efforts keep falling short. The real obstacle, he argues, isn’t a lack of good intentions or technical solutions. It’s the unexamined assumptions we bring to the table about what kind of world we’re living in and where humans fit.

Paradigmatic tensions at the core of sustainability

The paper looks at the ideas that were fist discussed in an issue of the Academy of Management Review in 1995. Even though sustainability research has come a long way since then, to a great extent the basic ideas have not changed. Anthropocentric perspectives continue to frame nature as an object to be managed in support of human goals, while ecocentric perspectives prioritise ecological systems and non-human life as the central focus of ethical concern.

These aren’t just polite disagreements about emphasis. They rest on completely different assumptions about reality itself, what exists, how we know things, and who or what has value. When people try to bridge the gap with concepts like green growth or win-win sustainability, they usually just smooth things over at the surface while leaving the deeper contradictions untouched. Dahlmann suggests this helps explain a frustrating puzzle: sustainability talk is everywhere, yet ecological decline keeps accelerating.

Relational ontology and rethinking human nature relations

To move beyond entrenched dualisms, the paper draws on relational ontology. From this perspective, relationships are not secondary to entities but are fundamental to how reality is constituted. Humans, organisations, ecosystems, and non-human species are not independent actors that later interact. They emerge through ongoing relationships within a shared planetary system.

This reframing matters because it quietly dismantles the whole idea of humans as external managers overseeing a separate thing called nature. Whether we realise it or not, we are embedded participants. Responsibility and agency stop being something individuals simply possess and start looking more like something that arises through networks, ecological, social, and institutional, that we’re caught up in.

Values of nature and the role of relationships

Building on this relational perspective, Frederik Dahlmann’s research draws on differences between instrumental, intrinsic, and relational values of nature. Instrumental values frame nature in terms of its usefulness to human activity. Intrinsic values recognise that nature has worth in and of itself. Relational values focus on the significance of relationships between humans and nature, including care, responsibility, identity, and belonging.

Relational values matter because they cut across the usual human centred versus nature centred divide. They acknowledge that humans depend on ecological systems without reducing nature to a stack of resources. And they resonate with lots of indigenous and non-Western ways of thinking that never bought into the idea that humans stand apart from nature in the first place.

Biodiversity, the web of life, and the limits of mitigation

A central contribution of the paper is its treatment of biodiversity loss as a systemic sustainability challenge rather than a secondary environmental issue. Biodiversity is presented as a foundation of planetary stability and a condition for life itself. Scientific evidence cited in the paper shows that current extinction rates far exceed historical norms and threaten the resilience of ecosystems on which all life depends.

This perspective draws attention to the web of life, where life emerges through complex interactions among species, ecosystems, and physical conditions. Humans have benefited greatly from this web, particularly during the stable climatic conditions of the Holocene. Yet modern economic and organisational systems increasingly undermine the processes that sustain it.

Against this backdrop, the paper challenges mitigation-focused approaches to sustainability. Even if further damage were halted, the planet would remain in a deeply degraded state. Sustainability therefore cannot be reduced to harm reduction alone. It requires active ecological restoration, particularly of biodiversity, to rebuild the conditions that allow life to flourish.

Sustainability as the pursuit of life

Dahlmann’s paper’s central proposal is to conceptualise sustainability as the pursuit of life. This framing deliberately encompasses life as biological diversity and Life as an emergent planetary phenomenon shaped by interconnected socio ecological systems. By doing so, it avoids privileging any single scientific or cultural interpretation of life and instead recognises their coexistence.

Under this conceptualisation, sustainability is no longer defined by equilibrium or trade-offs between competing goals. Actions and decisions are evaluated according to whether they strengthen or weaken the conditions that support life across species, ecosystems, and generations. Human wellbeing remains important, but it is understood as inseparable from the wellbeing of non-human life and ecological systems.

Implications for business and ethics

For business ethics, this reframing challenges prevailing assumptions about responsibility and performance. Organisational success cannot be measured solely through efficiency, growth, or even reduced environmental harm. Ethical responsibility extends to how organisational activities affect biodiversity, ecological resilience, and intergenerational justice.

Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, Prof. Dahlmann’s contribution lies in reorienting the sustainability conversation at a foundational level. By shifting the focus from managing trade-offs to sustaining life itself, the paper provides a conceptual lens that integrates ecological science, ethical reflection, and diverse understandings of human nature relations.

Useful links:

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• Read a related article: The Inner Shift: Unlocking business sustainability through personal transformation 
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