‍ ‍Inner Development Goals as a Flywheel for Collective Action
Désirée van Gorp

This text is an in English translated copy of an article published by Prof. dr. Désirée van Gorp in Liber Amicorum (2025) for Prof. Ronald Jeurissen in ‘Bescheiden en bemoedigend’, pg 36-39, Nyenrode Business Universiteit.‍

It seems that, against better judgment, we have outsourced our responsibility in recent years to institutions and everything beyond our own sphere of influence. I wonder if this is one of the reasons why, more than 50 years after the Club of Rome’s landmark report, so little has happened in terms of achieving our sustainability goals. This outsourcing appears to have allowed us to avoid taking responsibility for turning the tide of hyper-consumerism and the emphasis on continuous growth at the expense of nature and our precious living environment. The problem with outsourcing is that it makes us passive. We feel that our individual actions have little impact. This mindset blocks the systemic change we so urgently need. Change always begins with individuals, not institutions.

This is a call to place greater emphasis on and develop our inner development goals. With the awareness that each individual is an essential part of the larger ecosystem, personal behavior can be a turning point in making the world a better place for all living beings—and a flywheel for collective action.

Progress Is Disappointing

It’s been over fifty years since the Club of Rome gave us a wake-up call. Their iconic report, The Limits to Growth, emphasized the need to treat our planet and resources differently. Yet despite numerous international climate summits, ambitious agreements, the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ESG reporting, the introduction of the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and more, we must admit that progress has been disappointing.

Why? Perhaps because we have outsourced our own responsibility too easily—combined with a lack of leadership to make difficult decisions, especially when they go against the tide or short-term self-interest.

Lack of Ownership and Leadership

We expect governments, companies, and other international and local organizations to solve the problems for us. The trash bag lifted just over our doorstep, firework debris left on the streets, litter from parties and festivals, cigarette butts carelessly tossed, our energy-guzzling use of social media, massive food waste, beaches covered in garbage after a sunny day—it’s all seen as someone else’s problem.

There is a widespread lack of ownership for many issues that still cause significant harm to life on Earth. This absence of ownership has led us to a paradoxical deadlock: we want change, yet we wait for others to initiate it. We rage against governments, politics, corporations, tourists—anything outside our personal domain—but the civil servants, politicians, CEOs, employees, and tourists are us. People in different roles with shifting responsibilities.

If we don’t take ownership and show personal leadership, all these grand ambitions will collapse into uninspired finger-pointing, passive expectation, or resignation to the idea that apocalypse is our only future.

Curious Contradictions

We are a nation full of curious contradictions. We speak loudly about sustainability, biodiversity, and so on. Yet we perform poorly in achieving our sustainability goals and are, for example, among the top transit countries for protected animal and plant species and illegal products that damage biodiversity worldwide. Still, we dare to preach morality in international settings and were surprised by the response of developing countries during the 2024 Climate Summit in Baku.

It’s clearly not easy to consistently do the right thing—individually or collectively—for our environment, let alone for the environment of others we don’t even know by name.

Stop Just Keeping Our Own Streets Clean

Taking ownership and showing leadership starts with the West no longer pretending to be "cleaning our own green streets." Think of electric cars with poorly degradable batteries, knowing that mining and disposing of these batteries is disastrous for the developing countries to which we've outsourced the recycling. Or covering our roofs with non-degradable solar panels because we’re unwilling to pay for the more expensive biodegradable versions—and again outsourcing the polluting waste processing.

The list goes on. Let’s make decisions, individually and collectively, with the awareness that we are part of a bigger whole, beyond political affiliations. Let’s seek each other out by forming alliances for the common good. If we forge enough of these alliances with care for others, a movement can emerge—one capable of driving systemic change.

Personal SDGs

We can use the SDGs as inspiration and translate them into personal development goals. It’s important to share and live by these goals—not out of moral superiority or to present a perfect image, but to show that it’s not always easy and that we can support each other in making change happen, both individually and collectively.

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about developing personal leadership, taking conscious steps, and claiming more ownership over the problems we can help solve. Making SDG ideals manageable at the individual level can be as small—or big—as picking up litter on your street. It begins with small steps: individually, in organizations, and in politics.

This is how movements arise—not from judging one another, but from standing together, taking ownership, and making a positive impact on our environment and beyond.

A Flywheel for Change

We can all be a flywheel that inspires others to act collectively. All major changes began small and were sometimes initiated by just one person going against the current. We can draw inspiration from Ela Ramesh Bhatt, Jane Goodall, Govan Brown, Nelson Mandela, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and many others who have come before us in demonstrating personal leadership.

They showed ownership and personal leadership that served as a catalyst for collective actions that made a real difference. They were not drops in the ocean. They gave voice to and lived by their values and norms, inspiring others to do the same—not out of perfection, but from the belief that their individual actions were meaningful enough to make a difference in the lives of many.

The essence is that we must stop behaving merely as consumers and start acting as active participants in society. It’s tempting to reduce sustainability to buying “green” products or using less plastic. But real impact requires more. It demands a fundamental shift in how we think about our role in the world.

Let’s stop waiting for “big” solutions to come from elsewhere. The limited progress since the Club of Rome’s report shows what can go wrong when we do. The power of change lies in the collective sum of individual choices—whether we’re employees, students, teachers, politicians, parents, or play another role in society. Our personal development goals can serve as a valuable compass.

So don’t hesitate to share them. Seek out alliances so they can become a flywheel for collective action with a positive impact on the world around us.

Perhaps this can also contribute to the further development of business ethics—a field in which my esteemed colleague Ronald Jeurissen has great expertise. He has laid a foundational framework to help understand and actively engage with developments in integrity management and corporate social responsibility.

Désirée van Gorp is Professor of International Business at Nyenrode Business University
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