Here is another creative use of the compass by an institution. We re-name the wish spot “responsibility spot”. As an institution, it is not that we wish for the actual arrow to find itself in the wish spot, it is that we think we are successful as an institution when the arrow is in the responsibility spot. We fail in our responsibilities, as an institution when the actual compass arrow lies outside the responsibility spot. The further away, the less responsible we are.

Stronger still: as an institution we are held accountable for the direction and momentum of our institution. We can think of responsibility in terms of credit and debit. We are in credit when the institution is in the responsibility spot and we are in debit when the arrow lies outside. We can be more or less ambitious for our institution by making the responsibility spot smaller or larger. We can compare institutions by comparing the proximity they each have to their own declared responsibility spot, or to one that we choose ourselves. For example, we might hold an institution responsible to a higher standard (more restricted responsibility spot) than they declare.

For example, with the product label, as a customer, I might decide not to purchase products whose arrows lie outside an area of the compass that I associate with responsible production and distribution. If no products are available that fulfil a task – such as, say, a cleaning product, then I either do without, and forgo that function, or I make the responsibility spot wider for that type of product. This way of thinking is similar to the conception of “fair trade”. The responsibility spot is then used as a certification.

Responsibility is an informal version of accountability. If we have a relatively robust, and therefore, objective compass, then there is nothing preventing us from making the responsibility spot into an accounting device. We hold the institution accountable to the responsibility spot.

How would this work in practice? Take, for example a small business. The business chooses, and maybe advertises publicly its responsibility spot. Decisions are made in order to ensure that the compass arrow lies within the responsibility spot. When it lies outside, this is time for policy to change, and a final arrow outside the responsibility spot marks failure of the business. The success or failure is holistically conceived, not monetarily. But it can be used to justify loans, for example. It is a qualitative and quantitative accounting, not a purely monetary accounting. It is quantitative because we measure how far outside the responsibility/ accountability spot the arrow lies, or how close to the centre.

Imagine this at government level. Government informs the governed or decides with the governed, where they wish to find themselves qualitatively. A wish spot is determined. Government is successful when the actual arrow falls within the wish/responsibility spot. It is failing otherwise. Different government policies will influence where the arrow points.

Failure can be overcome in four ways. Gerrymander the indicator arrows. This is not recommended. The second way is to make different decisions, that is, change policy. A third way is to change the identity of the institution, that is, its boundary conditions to encompass institutions whose compasses added to that of the original institution will result in pulling the arrow back into the responsibility spot. Of course, mergers take negotiation and agreement not only in the boundary conditions of the institution, but also in the location and extent of the responsibility spot for the new institution. At government level, this is realised through colonisation, occupation, or more mildly, agreements for trade or support.

The fourth way to overcome failure is to change the size or location of the responsibility spot. When done honestly, this amounts to re-thinking the ideological orientation of the institution. It is a highly normative and philosophical reflection. For, example, we might acknowledge that the situation of our institution is very difficult, and lies in discipline, but relatively speaking it is much better than it could be, so we rest content with the length of the arrow in discipline not being too long. This is important to understand, especially when working on government decisions and using an ecological economics compass – or including ecological, social and economic information in our compass construction. Unless we are very cynical about our base-line (choose it to be in keeping with the gradual destruction of the eco-system), most regional compasses will find that the actual arrow is in discipline. This is because the environment is suffering irreparably. And this is a global problem. If this is what we are finding, then to be realistic, and to think in terms of democratic feasibility, we might hold ourselves accountable to shortening the arrow, and so not be too ambitious. When working with eco-system collapse around us, sobriety is more important than hyperbole and false hopes.

The attraction of thinking of government using this accounting method instead of, or in parallel with, a monetary one, is that it explicitly acknowledges a region’s qualitative sense of identity. In contrast, this is not well captured by GDP. Yet, this has become an iconic number for comparing nations and rating them. A nation is not a for-profit business (except under a very narrow neoclassical economics ideology). Instead, national, or regional, identity is qualitative and power-positional. For example, Canadians think of Canada as a nation that is good at compromise. It is a negotiating nation, where members negotiate with each other and Canada positions itself internationally to play a mediating role between other nations. The conception might be accurate or very far from reality. Construct a compass to find out. The responsibility spot would be somewhere in harmony, since compromise is usually to that end. It involves some sacrifice: discipline, but in an equal and negotiated way: back to harmony. So, the responsibility spot for Canada lies in harmony, and towards discipline. If Canadians identify with this image of Canada, then they can hold government accountable to the responsibility spot in the institutional compass for Canada. If this is the favoured image that Canadians have of Canada, and the final arrow for the compass for Canada lies within the accountability spot, then the government is doing what it should. If government is failing according to the compass, then a competing party who wants to gain power in the next election could promise to outdo the present government by promising policy decisions that address indicator arrows in the table in the appropriate way – favouring the ones that point on the for side of the responsibility spot, and discouraging those that pull the final arrow in the opposite direction to rotate the final arrow.

Say the government is failing with respect to the accountability spot. There might be good reason for this, outside the control of government. That is, it is not a matter of policy made by government, but of the world context Canada finds itself in. In this case government policy should aim indirectly at changing the arrow by influencing the context. Pandemics are an example. How government reacts is important. Pandemics together with government and public reaction are a social and economic stressor. Say, the effects are such that the arrow rotates out of the accountability spot. The cause of the pandemic is independent of government policy, but government reaction to it is not. Government can react internally by legislating in such a way as to: decrease the spread of disease, to keep the economy healthy, to ensure social and psychological ease or to use the occasion to decrease CO2 emissions and so on. The government can also act externally to decrease the global spread of disease, by restricting travel across its borders or by helping other nations to vaccinate their populations and stem the spread of the pandemic.

Say, this time that the reason for compass-accountability failure has to do with past policy. The policy needs then to be reversed or changed in some way, or some compass-direction-compensating policy needs to be adopted, and sufficiently to pull the arrow back to the accountability spot. The compass holds us accountable. When we use compasses, there is less room for dishonesty or gerrymandering.

Compare GDP as a means of comparing nations, to the compass as a means of comparing nations. We look at GDP per capita, and look at rate of growth of GDP. The rate is less important in “developed” economies. We tell the difference between the two with the GDP per capita.

The compass is a more subtle way to make comparisons. There are two ways for a nation to boast using a compass. One is to show that the nation is doing well by its internal qualitative conception of identity. It’s choice of where to put the responsibility spot corresponds to the direction of the final arrow for that country. The second is in terms of an externally decided upon accountability spot; where we might decide for ourselves that we would not want to live in such a region, even if it is doing well according to its internally decided criteria. This decision is made simply because we do not share the values of that region.

For example, nations can be compared on the basis of their sense of security, adherence to tradition, hedonism and so on (Shmeleva, 338). See Fig. 10.1. The colour groupings represent culturally similar values. This is what is done by Inglehart (2015) when he uses the Schwartz theory of values to compare nations. (Shmeleva 2017, 344). But here, I am proposing to use the compass not as a comparison of actual character of the members of a nation, but also compare the success of that nation in preserving certain values that figure in their sense of identity. Would this not be a more interesting and honest means of comparison, rather than GDP? It would be more sensitive to differences in values and in national character, promoting and recognising a plurality of values. Of course, a nation that wants to boast of its ecological consciousness, had better be using an ecological economics compass, similarly for anyone interested in comparing countries or regions with respect to strong sustainability. We might well find that many of the poorer nations come out on top with this basis of comparison, and for that reason alone they should be appreciated, supported and turned to for advice.

Fig. 10.1
figure 1

The grouping of countries according to the value structure in Schwartz’ theory. (The Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map – World Values Survey 7 (2020) [Provisional version]. Source: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/, Shmeleva (2017))

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In summary, the compass conception is very flexible in its adaptations. It is not static or completed. It is a way of looking at the world, and of comparing institutions. The exercise of constructing a compass elicits philosophical enquiry in a structured way. This is important when making decisions in a complex context, and when there are appreciable tensions.