Good business needs a peaceful and just world in which to operate and prosper. Likewise, peace thrives in a healthy economic environment. However, many companies - either directly or indirectly - are involved in the arms race and in a battle to exploit and control scarce resources. As a result of the ambiguous power of business, a timely reflection on its impact on war and peace is needed as well as a conscious pro-peace commitment. Business, Ethics and Peace gathers a selection of papers presented at the International SPES Conference Business for Peace, Strategies for Hope at Ypres, April 10 - 12, 2014. Among the many initiatives commemorating the centennial of World War I, this project focuses on the ethical need to prevent the next conflict. It interprets and presents peace as a holistic and evolving concept, defining the need for an ethical charter of human rights and responsibilities. The papers illustrate the impact of religion in peace management and present solutions and practices for corporate peace-building.

This book brings together a number of important essays on the intersection of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship, examining them through a shared focus on 'the will to serve'. This combination bears out the insight that inspiring social and economic leaders are able to transform a conflictual human settlement into a collaborative and caring human community. The book seeks to answer the question of whether we can induce from their 'way of doing things' a model of civic entrepreneurship and leadership that can inspire people in profit, non-profit and public organizations. It also examines the extent to which the will to serve is compatible with the will to maximize profit or the will to gain economic, political or religious power. Furthermore, it asks how far different spiritual traditions create different models and examples of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship. This book will be of interest to researchers working in the fields of business ethics, business spirituality and corporate social responsibility.

This book brings together a number of important essays on the intersection of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship, examining them through a shared focus on 'the will to serve'. This combination bears out the insight that inspiring social and economic leaders are able to transform a conflictual human settlement into a collaborative and caring human community. The book seeks to answer the question of whether we can induce from their 'way of doing things' a model of civic entrepreneurship and leadership that can inspire people in profit, non-profit and public organizations. It also examines the extent to which the will to serve is compatible with the will to maximize profit or the will to gain economic, political or religious power. Furthermore, it asks how far different spiritual traditions create different models and examples of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship. This book will be of interest to researchers working in the fields of business ethics, business spirituality and corporate social responsibility.

This volume celebrates the work of Laszlo Zsolnai, a leading researcher and scholar in the field of the ethical and spiritual aspects of economic life, who has made significant contributions to the connection between ethics, spirituality, aesthetics and economic theory. The book offers a selection of essays concerned with the ethical, spiritual and aesthetic context within which economics as a social studies discipline should be situated in order to avoid the sort of dehumanising consequences that theories based on utility maximisation and rational choice necessarily entail. It presents the economic activities of human beings not as some sort of preordained obedience to universal laws that operate independently of other human concerns, but, rather, as a part of the human desire for the Aristotelian good life. It looks at the various considerations -moral, spiritual and aesthetic - that take part in the formation of economic decisions in sharp contrast with theories that purport to explain economic phenomena solely on the basis of utility maximisation.