Problematizing solutions: why business is so wrong, all the time
Updated: 1 day ago
Across many areas of public life, the label solution often carries an oddly disarming effect: once something is presented as a fix, critical scrutiny frequently diminishes. The word itself implies closure, competence and progress, encouraging acceptance before effectiveness has been demonstrated. The framing of an intervention as a ‘solution’ can narrow attention, encouraging optimism while discouraging deeper questioning. The result is not simply misplaced trust but a subtle cognitive closure: a tendency to stop thinking critically, adopt conceptual blinkers and assume that the presence of a proposed fix signals that the underlying problem is already under control.
The ‘solution’ of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for business harms to the planet and sustainability is a given; but if it were a success, why has the planet got hotter, not cooler? Dirtier, not cleaner? More unequal, not less? We are led to believe we are deploying the fix, but the fix isn't working and still we stick with the fix. Sometimes, solutions are the problem. That’s why we need to problematize solutions. Sometimes, business solutions fix problems for businesses but not for those affected by the problem business causes. Ask yourself this: sustainability, of what?
Business education is often oriented toward solutions. Students are encouraged to diagnose problems, develop strategies, innovate products, optimise processes and deliver measurable improvements. Case studies frequently culminate in recommendations; consultancy frameworks emphasise actionable outcomes; entrepreneurial culture celebrates disruption and rapid fixes. This orientation reflects the practical aspirations of business studies: organisations operate under pressure, and decisive action appears necessary; bold, masculine actions present as heroic.
Yet critical thinking in business requires more than the ability to generate solutions. It also requires the capacity to interrogate solutions themselves: to ask how they arise, whose interests they serve, what assumptions they carry and whether they sometimes reproduce the very problems they claim to resolve. In short, sometimes, the solution is the problem.
This is why we problematize solutions. Business often casts itself as the hero of its own story — selling progress, innovation, and salvation — even when its activities have helped create crisis in the first place. It’s an inversion of logic for which we are all paying dearly. But business in its many forms is responsible for many of the problems it presents itself as the solution to, without acknowledging its own role in that destructive cycle.
Solutions as Sources of Problems
Many business interventions originate in earlier business activities. Environmental degradation provides a clear illustration. Industrial production contributes to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Subsequent markets emerge offering carbon offsets, sustainability consulting, green finance products and technological mitigation strategies. While some of these initiatives generate the appearance of improvement, they also create new profit streams that depend on the persistence of the original problem. The solution is the problem.
A similar pattern appears in financial services. Financial innovation designed to increase liquidity and growth has historically contributed to systemic instability, prompting further innovation in risk management, derivatives and regulatory technology. Each wave of solutions arises to address the consequences of earlier solutions. The cycle illustrates how business activity is rarely external to the problems it seeks to solve.
Recognising this recursive relationship is central to critical business thinking. It shifts attention from isolated events to systemic processes, encouraging students to ask not only what works but what produced the conditions requiring intervention in the first place.
The Masking Function of Solutions
Solutions can also perform symbolic or reputational functions. Organizations often communicate responsibility through sustainability initiatives, corporate social responsibility programmes, or diversity strategies. These activities an shape perceptions in ways that stabilise organizational legitimacy without necessarily transforming underlying practices.
This masking effect is not always deliberate. Institutions tend to frame their actions positively, emphasising progress, innovation, and leadership. Over time, such framing can normalise a narrative in which business appears primarily as a problem-solver rather than a contributor to social or ecological harm. Critical analysis asks whether solution discourse sometimes obscures structural causes or redirects attention away from deeper change.
A related phenomenon occurs when the mere announcement of a solution begins to function as evidence that a problem has been addressed, even when underlying conditions remain largely unchanged. Public commitments, policy pledges, technological roadmaps or institutional initiatives can create a sense of forward movement that dampens urgency and scrutiny. The mere act of talking of them produces the social impression that action has occurred. This resembles symbolic performativity, discursive legitimacy, or sometimes non-performative speech (a term associated with Sara Ahmed), where declarations of commitment create reputational effects without corresponding structural change. Talking the talk but not walking the walk. It is performance for public perception rather then ethical outcome that presents the illusion of change without enacting it.
Climate targets illustrate this dynamic: long-term net-zero pledges can generate reassurance despite continued short-term emissions growth. Likewise, organisational diversity statements, urban regeneration plans or public health strategies can symbolically signal action while substantive outcomes lag behind intentions. Psychologically and socially, the articulation of a solution can satisfy the desire for control and progress, allowing individuals and institutions to feel the issue is ‘in hand’. This reflects a common cognitive and institutional tendency to equate planning with resolution. The risk is that problems become rhetorically managed rather than materially solved, and critical attention shifts away precisely when sustained engagement is still required.
Arrogance and Epistemic Confidence in Business
Another aspect of problematizing solutions involves examining the confidence with which business often positions itself as capable of addressing complex societal challenges. Management discourse frequently emphasises efficiency, scalability, innovation and leadership. These qualities can foster a form of epistemic arrogance: an assumption that business expertise is universally applicable and valid, even in domains involving deep social, cultural or ecological complexity. This perspective encourages humility in managerial practice. It suggests that effective leadership may require listening, collaboration and contextual sensitivity as much as analytical skill. Importantly, questioning solutions does not entail rejecting business entirely or adopting a purely sceptical stance. Critical thinking differs from cynicism. Cynicism dismisses; critique investigates. Problematizing solutions aims to understand complexity rather than to deny progress. It’s an honest accounting.
Practical Questions to Ask
To operationalize this mindset, you can adopt several guiding questions when evaluating business ‘solutions’:
Origins: What conditions produced the problem? Did earlier business activities contribute to those conditions?
Beneficiaries: Who benefits materially, socially or reputationally from the solution? Who might be excluded?
Assumptions: What underlying beliefs about markets, technology, or human behaviour shape the proposed fix?
Unintended Consequences: Could the solution create new dependencies, inequalities or disasters?
Alternatives: Are there non-market or community-based approaches that receive less attention? Why?
These questions do not prevent action; they improve its quality by making assumptions explicit.
Conclusion
Business education lionizes itself as the heart of problem-solving, but largely ignores the business role in the construction of those problems. Many business solutions emerge from conditions shaped by previous business activity; some function symbolically to sustain legitimacy; others reflect an overconfidence in managerial expertise. Problematizing solutions situates it within broader social and ecological contexts. Adopting this mindset enhances intellectual rigour and professional responsibility as well as taking responsibility for the futures your children will inhabit. It cultivates the capacity to act while remaining critically aware, an essential competence in a world where the boundary between problem and solution is often less clear than it first appears.
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