The evolution of sustainability concerns over business activities: From local to cross-national to global

Although sustainability has recently become a crucial topic of discussion among business practitioners and scholars, the much longer history of sustainability addressing how companies operate is little known. In this chapter, we analyze the historical evolution of attitudes toward sustainability concerns over business activities, i.e., societal worries about the negative externalities of business activities on social and environmental issues. We propose that sustainability concerns in business have a deep historical foundation that can be traced back to the 18th century. Over time, these concerns have expanded in the scale at which they operate, moving from the local (1700s-1960s) to the cross-national (1970s-1990s) to the global (2000s-2020s). We illustrate this evolution by showcasing the development of two sustainability concerns in business activities: poor working conditions and industrial pollution.