Why Not Business?

A General Motors executive once said that to one of the authors of this chapter. Though sympathetic to the idea that business might contribute to a better world–even by reducing the amount of violence in the world–the idea proved a bit overwhelming when he thought of adding the task to his job description.
Indeed, it can seem that assigning a role to business for peacebuilding–or for acting to address atrocities–is far removed from the work of businesspeople in at least two important ways. While it is tempting to think of “business” in institutional terms, the reality is that to ask business to build peace or to reduce the likelihood of a mass atrocity is asking some human being, balancing work and family life and juggling demands of bosses and colleagues, to add something seemingly enormous and complicated to a normal work day. The term “business” can cloud the reality that such demands are one among any number of requests people receive and face pressures to accomplish. Even from a more institutional basis, the notion that businesses are to take on a role of creating the governance structures that inhibit war and atrocities seems somewhat far afield from commercial institutions’ central task of creating wealth. Yet, while bearing these perspectives in mind, in this chapter we wish to argue that businesses can play a role in creating a more peaceful world, one that contributes to peace generally and, by doing so, also lessens the likelihood of mass atrocities. How would business do this?