This book reconstructs major paradigms in the history of economic ethics up to, and including, the present day. Asserting that ethics should be integral rather than marginal to economics and management education, Reframing Economic Ethics highlights the need for a paradigm change from mechanistic to humanistic management, and argues that the failures of markets and managers in recent years were paved by a misguided management education. The author shows how the reader can and must learn from the history of economic thinking in order to overcome the theoretical shortcomings and the practical failings of the present system.

This book demonstrates how principles of a Humanistic Management paradigm are practiced in a variety of industries and regions by businesses of different ownership structures and sizes. What unites these businesses is their commitment to the three stepped approach of Humanistic Management, which is grounded in unconditional respect for the dignity of life, the integration of ethics in management decisions, and active engagement with stakeholders. These businesses are not labeled social enterprises, but operate within the mainstream of competitive markets. However, they do have a deep sense of responsibility towards the communities in which they operate and act accordingly, knowing that sustaining business success over time depends on a value proposition to society at large. The cases featured in this book serve to clarify that businesses can thrive not despite but because they are upholding principles of Humanistic Management. It will be valuable reading for academics working in the field of business ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

Transforming Capitalism addresses the challenges to shareholder capitalism. It explores: fair play in the market place;challenges on systemic, organizational and individual levels; the need to refocus our economic system around community and cooperation; the current challenges and transform capitalism.

This book demonstrates how principles of a Humanistic Management paradigm are practiced in a variety of industries and regions by businesses of different ownership structures and sizes. What unites these businesses is their commitment to the three stepped approach of Humanistic Management, which is grounded in unconditional respect for the dignity of life, the integration of ethics in management decisions, and active engagement with stakeholders. These businesses are not labeled social enterprises, but operate within the mainstream of competitive markets. However, they do have a deep sense of responsibility towards the communities in which they operate and act accordingly, knowing that sustaining business success over time depends on a value proposition to society at large. The cases featured in this book serve to clarify that businesses can thrive not despite but because they are upholding principles of Humanistic Management. It will be valuable reading for academics working in the field of business ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

In the light of growing political and religious fundamentalism, this open access book defends the idea of freedom as paramount for the attempt to find common ethical ground in the age of globality. The book sets out to examine as yet unexhausted ways to boost the resilience of the principle of liberalism. Critically reviewing the last 200 years of the philosophy of freedom, it revises the principle of liberty in order to revive it. It discusses many different aspects that fall under its three main topics: the metaphysics of freedom, quantitative freedom and qualitative freedom. Open societies worldwide have come under increasing pressure in the last decades. The belief that politics and markets fare best when guided by the principle of liberty presently faces multiple challenges such as terrorism, climate warming, inequality, populism, and financial crises. In the view of its critics, the idea of freedom no longer offers adequate guidance to meet these challenges and should be partially corrected or even entirely replaced by countervailing values. Against the reduction of freedom to the merely quantitative question as to how much liberties individuals call their own, this book draws attention to the qualitative concerns which and whose opportunities society should foster. It argues that, correctly understood, the idea of liberty commits us to defend as well as advance the freedom of each and every world citizen.

This book reconstructs major paradigms in the history of economic ethics up to, and including, the present day. Asserting that ethics should be integral rather than marginal to economics and management education, Reframing Economic Ethics highlights the need for a paradigm change from mechanistic to humanistic management, and argues that the failures of markets and managers in recent years were paved by a misguided management education. The author shows how the reader can and must learn from the history of economic thinking in order to overcome the theoretical shortcomings and the practical failings of the present system.

Transforming Capitalism addresses the challenges to shareholder capitalism. It explores: fair play in the market place;challenges on systemic, organizational and individual levels; the need to refocus our economic system around community and cooperation; the current challenges and transform capitalism.

The study examines the noumenal, the spiritual essence of religion. Starting from Kant's practical philosophy, it shows that this noumenon, which is seen as the indirect symbolic way of understanding the world, is familiar to everybody who strives to lead a good and honest life, including those with an atheistic orientation. The author accesses the normative critical concept of religion in three stages. To start with, central aporias of Kant's practical philosophy (doctrine of postulates, theory of the highest good) are reconstructed and cancelled using the synthetic practical proposition a priori. In the second stage, these aporias are related to further topics of Kant's practical philosophy in order to elucidate the importance of religion for practical consciousness. In the third section, the concept of religion gained systematically is further developed to a critical normative concept of phenomenal religion. With this concretisation the noumenal religion becomes a generalized concrete concept when compared with a mere rational religion.