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landscape. George Brenkert took it the next step, and was ably succeeded by Gary Weaver. Under their leadership, the joumal has, I think, become the premier joumal in business ethics. The quality of the articles is high; the rejection rate shows both that people are anxious to publish in the joumal and that the selection procedure is stringent; and the joumal is not only professional in all its aspects but is also a model in the way it handles submissions, the care it gives them in the reviewing process, and the feedback it gives to both authors and reviewers. The joumal is surely the leader in business ethics in publishing articles of high quality concemed with the field's methodologyboth normative and empirical, and their intersectionand with the many theories propounded from stakeholder theory and triple-bottom-line accounting to postmodemism and behavioral ethics. Yet, despite some excellent articles dealing with specific ethical issues, there is a comparative paucity of insightful ethical analyseseither empirical or theoreticalof the many issues arising out of the turbulent times through which we have come and toward which we seem to be headed. Perhaps that is appropriate for a scholarly joumal, which is not political and which has correctly avoided adopting any ideological stance. But objective clarification of ethical issues is an important social function that should not be left to political pundits, to ideologically bound politicians, or to superficial news reports or bloggers. BEQ can play that role. Business ethics has merged into corporate social responsibility. It continues to be in danger of being co-opted by business for its own purposes, and must be vigilant lest it lose its critical and independent edge while remaining relevant to current developments in business and economics. BEQ has passed out of its adolescence. As it emerges into its maturity, it can aspire to be even more influential than it has been. It can make a difference not only to the scholarly community, but also to the business community and to society as a whole. The past twenty years have supplied us with pressing issues. We can strengthen BEQ by increasing the ratio of articles we contribute that raise, clarify, and discuss the ethical issues at the heart of our economic system and the ethical challenges that business as it is and is becoming both face and raise. The joumal can nudge us in this direction by continuing to choose timely topics for special issues. May the next twenty years surpass the past twenty and may BEQ prove itself even more relevant than it has been not only to the field but to business and to society at large. Richard T. De George, University of Kansas
W I L L THE FUTURE BE SUSTAINABLE?

Reviewing the tenth anniversary issue of Business Ethics Quarterly, published at the start of the new millennium, one is hard-pressed to find a unified theme among more than thirty essays reflecting on the present and future state of business ethics. Globalization is the most common topic, with four essays explicitly focused on ethical issues in the global economy. While this should serve as a caution for forecasting future trends in business ethics, I will nonetheless offer my own prediction for the issue that will define the coming decade. I believe that sustainability will become

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increasingly important for business in the next decade and the implications of this, "the next industrial revolution," will require significant attention from managers, investors, consumers, govemment and, yes, even business ethicists. Like globalization, the driving force behind the sustainability revolution lies not in the abstract world of the academy, but in what is occurring in the day-to-day practice of contemporary business, Sustainability is already a guiding principle in the worlds of industrial engineers, architects, constmction companies, mechanical engineers, operations managers, local city councils and zoning boards, public utilities, retailers, marketing departments and, of course, public relations departments. Entire sectors of the economy, from energy and transportation, to food and constmction, are now deeply engaged with challenges of sustainability, Sustainability issues are shaping firms as diverse as BP and Walmart, and are undeniably becoming a significant factor in consumer behavior. The traditional corporate annual financial reports have all but been replaced by corporate sustainability reporting. The importance of sustainability in business ethics will increase in the coming decade because the world of business already has become the world of sustainable practice. Work in sustainable ethics will likely occur throughout the normal range of research in business ethics. Scholars will be called upon to provide conceptual, normative, empirical, and critical analyses, and my hope is that BEQ and the Society for Business Ethics will be at the center of much of this work. The conceptual work that needs to be done certainly includes refinement of the very concept of sustainability. Like the concept of a "stakeholder," sustainability has initial intuitive simplicity, but that simplicity masks many difficulties. What is the proper object of sustainability? Does it most appropriately apply to individual firms? Industries? Economies? The ethical dimension of sustainable practices must also be explored fully. What, exactly, is the relationship between this so-called thirdpillar of sustainability, ethical sustainability, and the economic and environmental pillars? Philosophically, should this ethical dimension be conceptualized in terms of distributive justice, the rights of future generations, utility, or such virtues as fmgality and pmdence? The normative work that awaits being done extends to virtually every functional area of business. Marketing and operations are akeady deeply involved in issues of sustainability, and many normative issues are waiting to be addressed in these fields. Business liability for the entire life-cycle of consumer products will surely receive focused attention from business ethicists. Managing the sustainable practices of an entire supply chain will likely gamer both public and academic attention, much in the way that child labor and sweatshops generated business ethics work in the last decade, Sourcing of products, from building materials to food, will raise ethical issues across the entire range of business operations. Finance and accounting ethics will be expected to address triple-bottom line accounting, ethically issues in microfinance, and socially responsible investing. Already, strategic management courses and textbooks acknowledge the critical importance of sustainability to corporate strategic planning, A great deal of empirical work also remains to be done with sustainable practices, not the least of which will involve the alleged connection between environmental sus-

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tainability and economic success. One thinks of Walmart's recent strategic move into sustainability as providing ample resources for countless case studies on the business case for sustainability. The relative success of various measures of sustainability, from LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building standards and "Energy Star" certification for consumer products, to organic certification of food and other "eco" or "green" labeling programs, will provide social scientists with innumerable business practices and cases to analyze and evaluate. One topic that deserves attention from both normative and empirical sides, is the alleged connection between environmental sustainability and the social and political dimensions. To what degree is environmental sustainability compatible with political and economic liberty, local autonomy, and democratic decision procedures? Will market forces encourage sustainable practices within an industry, or will market forces encourage a race to the bottom of sustainability? Is sustainable economics a subset of market economics, or an altemative to it? Finally, business ethicists will also be called upon to continue to provide what I think is their most important function, that of social critic and gadfly. There is no question that "sustainability" has become something of the latest fad in many business circles. Even for those of us who believe that there is something philosophically and ethically profound at the core of sustainable business practices, there will always be much work to do to separate the significant from the trivial, the noteworthy from the faddish, the revolutionary from the merely fashionable. Locke's conception of philosophy as under-laborer should remind us that much important work is done by those who clear the way for real work by ridding the path of confusion and shams. Business practitioners are already deeply involved in sustainability; ethicists can assist by helping to reduce the clutter. The guiding principle for this work should be that if everything is sustainable, nothing tmly is. Not every firm and not every industry can be expected to survive into a sustainable future, and separating those that should from those that should not will be one of business ethics' most important roles in the coming decade. Joseph Desjardins, College of St. Benedict/St. Joseph's University
SUSTAINABILITY, CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATION, INSTITUTIONS, AND GOVERNANCE

"We have now woven a web of interdependence around the world . . . which threatens the capacity of contemporary institutions to govern and lead" (Senge, Dow, and Neath 2006). The story begins with a demand for sustainability. While sustainability started as an environmental term, it soon became clear that without social justice and economic development (not necessarily growth), the environment would be in peril.* The demand for this tripartite notion of sustainability comes from a complex set of stakeholders. Satisfying this demand often requires going beyond institutional

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