Business and Biodiversity: Measurement of an Ambiguous Goal
Type
conference contribution
Date Issued
2024-05-30
Author(s)
Abstract
Biodiversity serves as a silent partner to businesses by nurturing critical resources, providing natural
infrastructure, and fostering an environment in which industries and businesses thrive. Increasingly,
biodiversity loss threatens the natural foundations of businesses and the overall well-being of
societies. However, the relationship between biodiversity and business is neither fully understood
nor easily measured as it requires knowledge of biophysical and geospatial data. In this paper, we
present a comprehensive framework for measuring biodiversity impacts and dependencies of
businesses across ecosystems and species. We develop this framework through the lens of the
natural resource dependence theory (NRDT), extending the boundary conditions of NRDT to
include biodiversity as a source of uncertainty that affects organizational strategies and
performance. Based on our framework, we offer six main categories of importance when measuring
biodiversity: 1) organizational impacts on ecosystem, 2) organizational impacts on species, 3)
ecosystem dependence, and 4) species dependence, 5) ecosystem impacts on organizations, and 6)
species impacts on organizations.
infrastructure, and fostering an environment in which industries and businesses thrive. Increasingly,
biodiversity loss threatens the natural foundations of businesses and the overall well-being of
societies. However, the relationship between biodiversity and business is neither fully understood
nor easily measured as it requires knowledge of biophysical and geospatial data. In this paper, we
present a comprehensive framework for measuring biodiversity impacts and dependencies of
businesses across ecosystems and species. We develop this framework through the lens of the
natural resource dependence theory (NRDT), extending the boundary conditions of NRDT to
include biodiversity as a source of uncertainty that affects organizational strategies and
performance. Based on our framework, we offer six main categories of importance when measuring
biodiversity: 1) organizational impacts on ecosystem, 2) organizational impacts on species, 3)
ecosystem dependence, and 4) species dependence, 5) ecosystem impacts on organizations, and 6)
species impacts on organizations.
Event Title
GRONEN 2024 Conference
Event Location
Skema Business School, Paris, France
Event Date
27.05-30.05.2024
Division(s)
Contact Email Address
kerrigan.unter@unisg.ch