Dharmic Governance: How Buddhist Stakeholder Ethics Transform ESG Implementation

Abstract

This study examines environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices from the perspective of how ethical considerations enter governance, rather than from the more familiar questions of performance effects or risk management. The starting point is a simple observation: in many organizational settings, decisions are taken before metrics, reporting formats, or compliance routines fully determine what counts as acceptable or sufficient. The discussion draws on early Buddhist sources associated with the Pāli Canon. Concepts such as ethical restraint (sīla), intention (cetanā), practical discernment (paññā), and interdependence (paṭiccasamuppāda) are used as points of reference for thinking about how judgment is formed under constraint. These ideas are not treated as doctrines to be applied, nor as variables to be measured. They are taken instead as ways of describing orientations that shape how attention is directed and how limits are recognised when trade-offs cannot be resolved mechanically. The analysis is conceptual in scope. Empirical work is referred to where it helps locate the argument, but no causal claims are advanced and no effects are quantified. Ethical orientation is understood as operating within existing governance arrangements and power structures, not as displacing them. References to finance and valuation are included only to clarify how ethical considerations may enter familiar governance discussions, without proposing operational tools. The argument is culturally situated and does not assume transferability across contexts. What the paper offers is a way of reading ESG governance that keeps ethical ordering and judgment in view, alongside procedures and metrics, rather than in place of them.