From Fiduciary to Vivantary Responsibility

Abstract

The interface between business ethics and environmental responsibility is environmental ethics. Environmental ethics deals with the nature of moral ity in relationships involving humans and the environment. The normative claim that we have duties and obligations in our relationships with the envi ronment is analogous to the normative claim in the realm of human ethics that we have duties and obligations in our relationships with other humans (Taylor, 1986). In this paper, we will refer to the human duties and obligations to the environment as "vivantary responsibility." Vivantary re sponsibility occurs at the intersection of environmental ethics and manage ment decision-making. The word "vivantary" was coined by Franz (2001) as a new analogical formulation that is modeled on the word "fiduciary." Fiduciary responsibil ity is a well-developed and well-understood concept in both public and private organizations. Fiduciary responsibility comes into play whenever a manager is charged with the duty to manage the financial resources of another in an optimal fashion. The thesis of this paper is that the current concept of fiduciary responsibility is defined so narrowly that many efforts at fulfilling fiduciary responsibility have unintended side effects that lead to sub-optimal or even detrimental management of financial resources. In