Perhaps now more than ever, business leaders are called on to address and manage a multitude of risks and opportunities on a global scale. With rapidly evolving technologies, urgent global issues, and stakeholders who expect more and have platforms for voicing their opinions like never before, being in business is increasingly complex. Complicating matters further, debate continues about the extent to which companies should act, particularly with regard to environmental and social challenges that arise in and beyond their operations. While a myriad of important laws and regulations have emerged to encourage companies to define and address specific issues, these are not sufficient. Critical business decisions — particularly when it comes to strategy, risk, and stakeholder impact — fall into grey areas where rules, frameworks, and laws will never be clear enough. Instead, these are ethics questions which require responsible businesses to respond by looking beyond what they must do and identifying what they should do.
