A summary of the most important issues, approaches and models in the field of spirituality in business, economics and society. "The Handbook of Business and Spirituality" presents a comprehensive pluralistic view covering all the major religious and spiritual traditions.

This groundbreaking new book by business scholar William C. Frederick presents an innovative, exciting - even revolutionary - view of corporate management and the challenges it confronts in today's world. The author proposes a management paradigm shift transforming the way corporations do business. Management scholarship and research may well be rechanneled from current orientations to new models, concepts, and theories of what it takes to manage corporations in a planetary world confronting climate change, energy crises, and securing the well-being of all global citizens. Natural Corporate Management (NCM) is an awareness and an acceptance by the managers of today's business corporations of the close functional linkage between natural forces and human economic choices. NCM is not a set of techniques or methods but is a growing consciousness by managers of the presence and influence of nature in all managerial decisions. The book's central theme is that business and nature are locked into an evolutionary partnership that defines all aspects of corporate management, including decisions, policy, goal-seeking, organizational design, workplace behavior, and productive operations. This partnership of Nature and Nurture yields economic, social, and ecological dividends for corporations, their stakeholders, and the global community. An "Evolutionary Cascade" depicts the various phases of evolutionary change - physical, organic, genetic, human, neurological, symbolic - beginning with the Big Bang origin of the Universe and continuing to modern times. These evolutionary events collectively influence the operational activities of all business firms. A "Natural Theory of the Firm" summarizes the NCM approach, as well as the mind-set of corporate managers, and the bio-socio-economic consequences of their decisions. This theoretically-innovative book proposes an agenda of corporate actions to promote long-term sustainability and economic well-being of business, its stakeholders, and planetary citizens everywhere. It will be essential reading for managers and researchers at all levels who wish to engage seriously with the challenges of organic life and its long-term sustainability.

In the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008 it is important to ask what ethics has to say to the many stakeholders in the U.S. economy. The crisis in the financial industry, precipitated by the bursting of a bubble in the housing sector, brought the U.S. economy to the brink of a major depression. Government officials, economists and financial executives intervened to implement measures to mitigate the damage, applying their expertise and using their best judgments to rescue the economy. The actions they took required technical competence, pragmatic judgments and controversial decisions. They worked through a crisis to try to prevent a very bad situation from becoming a catastrophe. As events played out in the autumn of 2008, there was little time to reflect on how immoral conduct contributed to the crisis and how financial recovery needs to be built on an ethical foundation. The purpose of this book is to examine the role of ethics in setting things right. In taking a close look at the events of 2008 this book makes an important contribution to business ethics.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of various New Testament passages with the purpose of identifying lessons, values, and behaviors that can contribute to an understanding of organizational spirituality from a Christian worldview. Covering contemporary concepts such as women in leadership, cross-cultural leadership, transparency, and authenticity, each chapter examines an organizational leadership topic through the lens of specific New Testament principles. This volume with a fresh perspective provides theoretical and practical applications for scholars and practitioners in the field of organizational leadership.

This book presents innovative strategies for sustainable, socially responsible enterprise management from leading thinkers in the fields of corporate citizenship, nonprofit management, social entrepreneurship, impact investing, community-based economic development and urban design. The book's integration of research and practitioner perspectives with focused best practice examples offers an in-depth, balanced analysis, providing new insights into the social issues that are most relevant to organizational stakeholders. This integrated focus on sustainable social innovation differentiates the book from academic research monographs on stakeholder theory and practitioner guides to managing traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. Managing for Social Impact features 15 contributed chapters written by thought leaders, industry analysts, and managers of global and local organizations who are engaged with innovative models of sustainable social impact. The editors also provide a substantive introductory chapter describing a new strategic framework for enhancing the Return on Social Innovation (ROSI) through four pillars of social change: Open Circles, Focused Purpose Sharing, Mutuality of Success, and a Persistent Change Perspective.

In order to make progress toward the UN Millennium Development Goals - and particularly in terms of poverty alleviation - business has a pivotal role to play: in terms of core business; purchasing products from the poor; employing them; and selling them affordable services and products. Serving the global 4 billion people at the base of the economic ladder - the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) - with suitable products and services is a new but growing field in research and practice. In the initial years, the focus of BoP was very much on selling products and services to a huge untapped market. Practitioners and academics focused on developing new distribution channels to reach the low-income markets and new technological solutions to address their needs. These first-generation "fortune-finding" approaches are now described as "business to four billion". Over the last few years, however, new priorities have gained prominence. This new value proposition can be framed as "business with four billion" and is "fortune-creating". So-called Next Generation, or BoP 2.0, strategies can bring companies and their target groups closer together. The goal is to co-create new business models as well as product and service solutions together with the target group. Integrating BoP into the innovation process - be it in terms of idea generation, product/service development, production or distribution/marketing - is seen as way to increase not only the impact on poverty alleviation, but also the benefits to the company. This paradigm shift - to co-creation or embedded innovation - in fact closely mirrors a shift previously made by development researchers who argued that the poor should no longer be viewed as the target of poverty reduction efforts, but as partners in, and an asset to, the development process. Bottom-up development approaches - such as Participation, Community-Driven Development, Empowerment, Asset-Based Community Development or Local Knowledge - emphasize the role of the poor and see them as central to the design and implementation of the development process. Even though some BoP researchers consider selective parts of this knowledge in their research, a comprehensive study that rigorously examines BoP ventures from a bottom-up development perspective has not yet been completed. This book attempts to fill that gap. Putting the Poor First examines the applicability of different elements in the bottom-up development literature to the innovation process of BoP ventures. It unveils connections between the two approaches and builds a theoretical base for the case study research. With three in-depth case studies and eight companies participating in a survey, the current state and experiences of businesses applying a bottom-up development perspective with BoP ventures in Latin America and the Caribbean is analysed. The elements of a bottom-up development perspective applied in BoP practice can be grouped into three categories: drivers for choosing a bottom-up development perspective in BoP ventures (e.g. such that products and services are more readily accepted); circumstances that help or hinder the application of a bottom-up development perspective in BoP ventures (e.g. the acceptance of the company by communities or previous experiences with poverty alleviation projects); and success factors when choosing a bottom-up development perspective in BoP ventures (e.g. the importance of power structures, pluralism and self-esteem). The many recommendations, such as empowering the poor by encouraging co-creation and outsourcing innovation, fill gaps in theory, support practitioners and lay the foundations for further research. This will be a key book for BoP researchers and practitioners on the ground. The reconnection of development approaches with BoP strategies puts the poor first.

In contrast to the vibrant development in global market entry activities, extant research on the subject is running out of steam. For example, countertrade, a major form of entry mode, has grown to 15 percent of the world trade but studies on the topic have dwindled to naught. The practice of gray market has expanded to include everything from batteries and cars to computers and mobile phones. However, research on gray market has become scarce. Research stagnancy does not limit to micro-marketing issues. The role of government in market entry has received little attention in spite of the active roles many governments, such as the Chinese and Indian governments, have played in creating a favorable environment to attract foreign direct investment and promote export. Written by a group of internationally renowned scholars, this volume of the "Advances in International Marketing" is devoted to bridge a knowledge gap between the practice of international market entry and the availability of research-based insights and principles for guiding that practice. Among the articles, Samiee discusses countertrade from a marketing viewpoint and introduces a unique marketing process perspective. Zou, Taylor, and Fang examine government influences on MNC's control over its foreign market venture. Li and Li investigate channel control in new product export. Mullen, Sashi, and Doney's case study highlights the complex issues in gray market from the perspective of both manufacturers and parallel marketers. Kopp and Zeng review the changes in Chinese patent laws and discuss market entry issues related to intellectual property rights.

Modern liberal democracies are troubled by public problems in which the free market is no innocent bystander. It is therefore generally acknowledged that the market must be controlled. Assisting the Invisible Hand is an investigation into contemporary thinking on controlling the market, especially with regard to the problem of dealing with environmental issues. The implicit modes of thinking in economics, political philosophy and administrative theory are uncovered and criticized. The book contributes to contemporary insight by arguing that the issue of market control must be addressed in terms of the relations between state, market and civil society. Furthermore, since controlling the market is so closely related to the ideals of liberal democracy, this book stresses the normative dimensions of the market control issue. The position adopted by the book is that the market cannot be controlled by the state alone. This responsibility should be shared between state, market and civil society.

This highly original book is an ethnographic noir of how Big Data profits from patient private health information. The book follows personal health data as it is collected from inside healthcare and beyond to create patient consumer profiles that are sold to marketers. Primarily told through a first-person noir narrative, Ebeling as a sociologist-hard-boiled-detective, investigates Big Data and the trade in private health information by examining the information networks that patient data traverses. The noir narrative reveals the processes that the data broker industry uses to create data commodities-data phantoms or the marketing profiles of patients that are bought by advertisers to directly market to consumers. Healthcare and Big Data considers the implications these "data phantoms" have for patient privacy as well as the very real harm that they can cause.

In The Cultural and Political Intersection of Fair Trade and Justice, Stenn uses Amartya Sen's theory of justice and Geert Hofstede's theory of cultural dimensions to answer the question: 'Is Fair Trade fair?' This exciting new volume focuses on a study of the effects of Fair Trade on indigenous women. Their stories are reported by the women themselves, which Stenn uses to develop a deeper understanding of Fair Trade, globalization, culture, and policy in building justice. This comparative study of Fair Trade and its effect on Bolivia's Andean women, working independently in handicrafts and collaboratively in agriculture, analyzes how Fair Trade has grown to become a multi-billion dollar, global industry. Stenn's 15 years of working with indigenous Andean women makes this in invaluable source for the study of Fair Trade and for Bolivia's population.

Organizational values are a hot topic as private and public organizations are not only evaluated according to their products and profits, but also according to the circumstances of the product -- labor conditions, materials, risks, human rights and social responsibility. Values are becoming the defining identity of organizations. This book covers this shift.

This book investigates into the principles of humanistic management and examines their throretical merits. In order to demonstrate that humanistic ideas also work in practice and can lead to actionable management guidelines it is a collection of case examples of how businesses succeed in generating social value whilst being profitable.

The recent financial crisis has awakened a renewed sensibility to ethics in business and management, and an increasing interest in a better understanding of how ethics and economics are intertwined. Managers and executives must understand not just the moral value of ethical behaviour, but also how this can strengthens and benefits the organization

Business Efficiency and Ethics presents both the theory of business efficiency and ethics, and a wealth of case studies based on practical experience. This unique perspective offers a framework for identifying this behaviour and reestablishing appropriate business behavior standards.

This book addresses one of the most urgent issues in contemporary American law-namely, the logic and limits of extending free exercise rights to corporate entities. Pointing to the polarization that surrounds disputes like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, David argues that such cases need not involve pitting flesh-and-blood individuals against the rights of so-called "corporate moral persons." Instead, David proposes that such disputes should be resolved by attending to the moral quality of group actions. This approach shifts attention away from polarizing rights-talk and towards the virtues required for thriving civic communities. More radically, however, this approach suggests that groups themselves should not be viewed as things or "persons" in the first instance, but rather as occasions of coordinated activity. Discerned in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, this reconceptualization helps illuminate the moral stakes of a novel-and controversial-form of religious freedom.

This book introduces the research agenda of relational economics as a political economy for the governance of local and global economic transactions in modern societies. It analyses the mechanisms of global value creation and production networks by studying cooperation in intra- and inter-firm networks, intersectoral stakeholder management, and transcultural leadership. The author develops a categorical taxonomy for private and public value creation based on the effective and efficient interlinking of, and interaction between, a range of resources and abilities. In contrast to mainstream economics, which largely focuses on the laws of discrete and dyadic exchange transactions, this book assesses the polyvalent characteristics of relational transactions. The chief categories involved in an economic theory of the relations between events are the relational transactions and their various forms of governance; the polycontextual cooperation between economic, political and civil society agents; and the factor incomes and relational rents that relational transactions produce. Today, relational transactions are the rule, not the exception, in modern economies and their global value creation networks. Given its scope and focus, this book will appeal to scholars of economics, economic sociology, organisational studies and related fields.

Business is a vital institution for a flourishing society, but there is mounting concern about its role in distorting wealth distribution, enabling and rewarding unethical behaviour, and despoiling the natural environment. A Consortium was formed in 2009 under the leadership of David Gautschi to bring together academics, business people, and interested members of society from around the world to discuss two questions: what is the purpose of business, and what is the role of the business school in the academy? Consortium Fellows gathered in eight sessions over five years from 29 countries to discuss, debate, and share perspectives on these questions. The Purpose of Business is an edited collection drawing from the perspectives of these sessions, with contributors from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia bringing culturally and intellectually diverse perspectives on these critical questions. This multifaceted work offers an exploration of business in relation to religion, art, neuroscience, geopolitics, energy, and beyond to inspire a better understanding of the role of business in the 21st century interconnected world.

The important yet contradictory role of innovation in society calls for a philosophy of innovation. Critically exploring innovation in relation to values, the economy and social change, Rafael Ziegler proposes a collaborative theory and practice of innovation that aims to liberate possibilities for our common futures. Following cues from the arts and drawing on the innovation literature across the social sciences, this book exposes pro-innovation bias and the gospel of disruptive change. Not only entrepreneurs but also civic networks and tinkerers are discussed as sources of innovation, and social change as a balancing act of innovation, exnovation and restoration. The discussion of capabilitarian, communitarian, liberal, republican and socialist ideas of justice and innovation leads Ziegler to a transformative proposal: 'enough innovation' based on enough for all and with respect for all. This is a thought-provoking read for scholars working on sustainability-transformation, democratic, responsible and social innovation, and philosophy of economics.

This book originated in a symposium on business ethics that took place in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Canterbury in September of 1997. Professor Werhane, who was a visiting Erskine Fellow, provided the keynote address, and many of the papers in this collection were originally presented at this symposium. We are grateful to Kluwer Publishers for the opportunity to publish these essays in their series on International Business Ethics. We want to thank the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the Darden School, University of Virginia, and the Erskine Trust and the Department of Management at the University of Canterbury for their support of Professor Werhane's fellowship, research for this text, and funding for its production. We especially want to thank Lisa Spiro, who copy-edited and prepared the manuscript for publication. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW This book originated in a symposium on business ethics that took place in the faculty of commerce, at the University of Canterbury, in September 1997. Professor Werhane, who was a visiting Erskine Fellow, provided the keynote address. Contributions to the proceedings were. inter-disciplinary, spanning theory and practice. Subsequent contributions were obtained from within New Zealand and from Asia. The book starts off on rather a pessimistic note: the new managerialism (the kind of thing Scott Adams jokes about in the world-famous Dilbert cartoons) is economically suspect and psychologically damaging.

Although the idea of social responsibility has a long and distinguished intellectual pedigree, Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR ) has re-emerged during the last fifteen years or so as a high-profile concept in both academia and business practice. This revitalized interest has come about largely because of the development of the markets for virtue that have institutionalized CSR in business practices in an unprecedented manner. CSR has achieved organizational distinctiveness within companies (e.g. in managerial and board responsibilities); social and environmental reporting requirements have dramatically increased; socially responsible investment funds have not only established themselves in their own right, but have also informed more mainstream investment criteria, particularly regarding social and environmental risk; a CSR consultancy industry has emerged, along with various vanguard groups and NGOs who seek not only to promote CSR, but also to bring critical perspectives to bear and to raise CSR standards; and governments around the globe have encouraged investment in CSR, better reporting of these activities, and the implementation of CSR initiatives that complement broader public policies.

As research in and around CSR blossoms as never before, this new four-volume collection from Routledge 's acclaimed Critical Perspectives on Business and Management series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Edited by two scholars from Nottingham University 's world-class International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, the collection gathers foundational and canonical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions.

With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Corporate Social Responsibility is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as an essential database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar and sometimes overlooked texts. For researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers, it is as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting is devoted to publishing high-quality research and cases that focus on the professional responsibilities of accountants and how they deal with the ethical issues they face. The series features articles on a broad range of important and timely topics, including professionalism, social responsibility, ethical judgment, and accountability. The professional responsibilities of accountants are broad-based; they must serve clients and user groups whose needs, incentives, and goals may be in conflict. Further, accountants must interpret and apply codes of conduct, accounting and auditing principles, and securities regulations. Compliance with professional guidelines is judgment-based, and characteristics of the individual, the culture, and situations affect how these guidelines are interpreted and applied, as well as when they might be violated. Interactions between accountants, regulators, standard setters, and industries also have ethical components. Research into the nature of these interactions, resulting dilemmas, and how and why accountants resolve them, is the focus of this series.

This book provides a richly illustrated study of sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship. Specifically, it examines the ways in which governmental policies and practices modify the social conditions necessary to promote innovation in businesses and by so doing impact economic development. Exploring topics such as green innovation, green customer capital, smart cities, green entrepreneurship and environmental responsibility, this book presents some of the most current research and best practices in the field. In today's global economy, strategies, policies and practices that address the negative effects of human activity on the environment need to be incorporated into the business framework in order for companies to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Around the world, such changes have already resulted in a broad range of products, production methods and technical features that ensure environmental protection. At the same time, the mass media's communication of a deteriorating earth have motivated a growing number of citizens in both developed and developing nations to modify their consumption habits towards more ecological products. Consequently, an increasing number of companies are reacting to these changes in business and legal frameworks and consumer preferences by investing in new forms of green innovation or "eco-innovation" designed to promote both environmental and corporate sustainability. For example, Hewlett-Packard eliminated lead from its welding process; Wal-Mart reduced the emissions of their suppliers; and Cisco, Dell and IBM are investing in smart grids. This volume showcases pioneering efforts among companies, citizens, and government agencies that are moving from theory to practice by placing sustainability at the core of their development strategies.

There is an unmistakable yet 'fuzzy' societal, organizational and political movement often referred to as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Often it emerges at the boundary of the business enterprise, expressed in changing relations with stakeholders and society at large. At a fundamental level, CSR appears to be a complex and multi-dimensional organizational phenomenon. This book elaborates and deepens the debate on Corporate Social Responsibility by exploring both the theoretical and practical aspects of organizing and implementing CSR within organizations. It captures and distils emerging implementation perspectives and unravels and demonstrates the possible changes and consequences of implementing CSR.

The return to business-as-usual after the economic earthquake that rocked financial markets, wrecked banks and brought to light the grotesque distortions of casino capitalism on people and planet must be resisted. A new form of capitalism is both necessary and possible as some forward-thinking political, business and civil society leaders have now recognised. This book is about the myriad problems that we face and the systemic changes that are necessary for all enterprises in whatever sector and however constituted to operate within sustainable limits, to lower their ecological footprint, to enhance social equity, and to develop a sense of futurity. Waddock and McIntosh argue that enterprise, innovation and creativity, like conversation, caring and sharing, are part of what it means to be human. They argue that we need to redefine our relationship with commerce to reconcile our relationship with the Earth. The authors see the seeds of economic change in new and fundamentally different forms - in entrepreneurship, networks, governance, transparency and accountability - already being planted and beginning to grow. To nurture these developments, they believe that we need to learn to "see" in new ways to begin to recognise their worth and to create a sufficiently broad, coherent and integrated social movement for change that can overcome the momentum of the current system. Incremental change - CSR, for example - will not be enough. Deep change is needed in the purposing, goals and practice of business enterprise. Deep change is needed in the ways that we, as humans, relate to nature and natural systems under severe stress from resource overuse and depletion, a quadrupled population during the 20th century, and human impact on climate. And deep change is needed in the ways in which we relate to each other, use our time and build our communities. This book documents some of the changes that are already in progress and provides optimism that a sustainable enterprise economy geared to innovation, creativity, problem-solving, entrepreneurialism and enthusiasm for life can produce wealth, preserve the natural environment and nurture social capital.