The purpose of this paper is to analyze to which point collective intelligence (CI) concepts and ideas, as applied to organizations, can contribute to enlarge the conceptual basis for business sustainability (BS).
The paper is written from an engineer‐minded, systemic and cybernetic perspective. It begins by establishing a definition for business as a special type of organization and frames its sustainability on autopoietic theory. Next, it presents basic ideas on CI and of its application to businesses. Then, it singles out which concepts of CI are of interest to BS.
Inside the autopoietic analysis of organizations, it is found that evolvability, understood as learning, is a concept with a potentially deeper and larger value than sustainability. Since evolvability (as learning) matches well the concept of intelligence, it is found that the application of CI ideas to businesses is relevant to BS. In particular, CI provides systemic arguments in favor of changing the condition of “employeeship” to “ownership” for BS, as a corollary.
All the findings indicated above are deemed relevant to managerial practice and general thinking and action on BS.
To the best knowledge of the author, this paper presents for the first time useful conceptual connections between BS and CI. The proposal of “evolvability”, understood as learning, as a concept to ground deeply BS is deemed original, as well as the systemic arguments in favor of turning “employeeship” into “ownership”, inside businesses. For the value, let the reader judge.
