The title of Sutapa Banerjee’s edited volume, The Business of Business Is (Not) Just Business, underlines something that few would argue against. The era when businesses could legitimately argue that the only responsibility they have is to their shareholders is behind us. The role of business is widely acknowledged to encompass a much larger range of stakeholders. Businesses are not exempt from society; they play an active role in shaping it not just in economic terms but also culturally. Employment, migration, gender, environment, aspirations, access to opportunity, public discourse and the very idea of progress are all shaped in some way or the other by business.

And the book’s declared intention is to examine this from the lens of behaviour on the ground. What actually shapes behaviour, what exactly is meant by change, what mechanisms help produce this change at ground level?

Building businesses

It brings together a diverse and accomplished set of minds to study these questions. The contributors include business leaders, investors, policymakers and domain specialists across questions of sustainability, inclusion, employment, gender, technology and corporate governance. Its range is considerable. The book covers a lot of ground with chapters on African agriculture, biofuels, circular business models, employment platforms, disability, women as economic actors, artificial intelligence, boardroom diversity, media narratives and brands. These are interspersed with essays from Banerjee that try and stitch the argument together and provide a form of synthesis.

The book also gives the reader informed opinion that is potentially far more valuable than a single person’s perspective. And here we certainly have a formidable array of names. These are people who have worked deeply on the subjects they are discussing and bring a level of authority steeped in practical understanding.

Several chapters describe how institutional constraints, market incentives and social prejudices appear from the perspective of those trying to build businesses or change organisations. This rescues the book from the trap of making impassioned appeals directed at “industry” to “do their bit”.

This is the book’s real contribution. It shifts the conversation from good-to-do to how-to-do. A lot of writing on corporate stays at the level of aspiration. This book focuses on the mechanism instead. What does it take to change behaviour? That is a much more difficult question, and a more useful one. Banerjee’s underlying scepticism about the belief in corporate circles that attitudes change because a policy has been announced or a workshop conducted gives this book a seriousness of intent that other writing on this subject often lacks. The idea that behaviour can change without waiting for a change in belief, that it is a variable that can be influenced directly, is an inspiring and radical idea which the book manages to bring alive with regularity.

Seeing real-life examples of women exercising authority can do more than workshops on female empowerment. Tying executive incentives to diversity outcomes can force organisations to search more intelligently for talent. Measuring gender participation across functions and levels and sharing it can expose the difference between token inclusion and actual power.

Similarly, the discussion on disability goes beyond exhortations. It examines how workplaces themselves are designed around an imagined “standard” employee, and how recruitment, training and performance systems might change once that assumption is challenged. Without acknowledging the dominant mental model at work which impedes the inclusion of the disabled, inclusiveness programs often end up being symbolic in nature.

Among the strongest contributions is Samir Barua’s discussion of board diversity. Instead of thinking about board diversity as a numerical end, he reminds us that a board dominated by a promoter can satisfy every formal requirement while being utterly devoid of independence.

Deepinder Goyal’s account of Zomato is refreshing precisely because it avoids grand theory. He describes the company almost as an accidental institution, whose purpose emerged from solving successive problems for customers, restaurant partners and delivery workers rather than from a pre-existing philosophy. It is one of the few essays where purpose feels discovered.

The limitations

The trouble with an anthology is that unevenness is built into its structure. While all the contributors come from impressive backgrounds, not all essays carry insight, with a few being more akin to competent case studies describing an organisational experience. The use of the behavioural lens is also not consistent, with a few contributions using conventional policy instruments that do not signal a new approach.

Some chapters fall into the language one hears at conferences: earnest, informed, but full of necessary dullness. The prose sounds like it could be out of a conference report even when the ideas are useful; it feels like they are often surrounded by too much exposition, familiar data and institutional throat-clearing.

And while it is well worth making the case that social interventions can be good for business, sometimes the point feels stretched. Women improve returns, disability reduces attrition, sustainability strengthens competitiveness. Some of these claims are persuasive. But the repeated insistence that every ethical choice must necessarily be better commercially feels like an oversell at times. At times, business might need to do something simply because it is the right thing to do.

On the other hand, there is an ability to look at the impact of business, both in terms of what it enables and what deleterious effects it has. It acknowledges that corporate action can expand opportunity, but it can also reproduce prejudice at scale. Technology can democratise access, but it can encode and perpetuate historical bias. Markets can reward sustainable behaviour, but they can just as easily reward the appearance of sustainability. Regulation is necessary, but regulation without enforcement becomes theatre.

It is through the hard-headed process of aligning incentives and providing behavioural nudges at the precisely right parts of the process that change becomes possible. This is an important contribution and a necessary one and the book, notwithstanding its limitations as an anthology, is a solid contributor to changing the narrative around corporate responsibility. Cutting through layers of corporate piety and bringing the discussion to the level of institutional practice is ultimately what makes this book valuable.

Santosh Desai’s latest book is Memes For Mummyji: Making Sense of Post-Smartphone India.

The Business of Business Is (Not) Just Business: How Behavioural Tools Can Drive Real Change , edited by Sutapa Banerjee, HarperCollins India.

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