This volume discusses the grand challenges of the Anthropocene era and explores how the economy can be transformed to serve the wellbeing of humans and nature in an integrated way. It develops a broad, spiritually informed view of the economy and argues for the need to shift the underlying materialistic value orientation of current economic and business functioning. The author argues that without adopting a non-materialistic value orientation, it is not possible for humanity to survive and...

This book addresses ethical and spiritual issues in economics. The central idea advanced in the book is that the extreme focus on the self by economic actors leads to the destruction of both material and non-material values.The assumptions of self-interest in behavior represent the core of mainstream economics today. From this perspective, the welfare of economic agents depends on their own consumption; their goal is to maximize their own welfare; and their choice is guided by the p...

This book explores the underlying causes of the pervasive dominance of ‘unethics’ in contemporary affairs in economics, business, and society. It is argued that the state of unethics is related to the overexpansion of market and market values in all spheres of social life and human activities. A correlate of this development is the emergence of an extremely individualistic, materialistic and narcissistic mind-set that dictates the decisions and behavior of people and organizations....

What should I do?, How should I deal with this?, How should I behave?, How should I act? we ask ourselves daily. But, this is only the first part of the sentence, while the full sentence is What should I do ... to achieve such and such?, for example to complete an assigned task, to do well before my boss or a client, to be pleased with myself, to carry out my plans, to make money in the stock market, to pass an exam, to complete an application, etc. These and similar questions that people ...

This contributed volume collects innovative papers by scholars from Europe, India, and the USA to investigate how spirituality can contribute to renewing business in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene era. These challenges include climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystems collapse, growing inequality, wellbeing deficiencies, and social unrest. Using insights from Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Existential Humanism the book explores the spiritual aspects of the presen...

The book - which was originally published by Kluwer in 2004 - is a collection of scholarly papers focusing on the role of spirituality and ethics in renewing the contemporary management praxis. The basic argument is that a more inclusive, holistic and peaceful approach to management is needed if business and political leaders are to uplift the environmentally degrading and socially disintegrating world of our age. The book uses diverse value-perspectives (Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, and Hum...

Buddhism points out that emphasizing individuality and promoting the greatest fulfillment of the desires of the individual conjointly lead to destruction. The book promotes the basic value-choices of Buddhism, namely happiness, peace and permanence.Happiness research convincingly shows that not material wealth but the richness of personal relationships determines happiness. Not things, but people make people happy. Western economics tries to provide people with happiness by supplyi...

The book is reclaiming economics as a moral science. It argues that ethics is a relevant and inseparable aspect of all levels of economic activity, from individual and organizational to societal and global. Taking ethical considerations into account is needed in explaining and predicting the behavior of economic agents as well as in evaluating and designing economic policies and mechanisms.The unique feature of the book is that it not only analyzes ethics and economics on an abstra...

Increasingly, it is being recognized that spirituality, defined here as "a multiform search for a transcendent meaning of life that connects them to all living beings and brings them in touch with God or ‘Ultimate Reality,’" is an aspect of almost every sphere and aspect of social life. It appears in humanity’s dealings with nature, home and community, healing, economics and business, knowledge, and education. The Routledge International Handbook of Spirituality in Society and the Prof...

From its earliest beginnings and through much of its history, the philosophical enterprise has rooted its intellectual procedures in common sense. Ordinary discourse is what the pre-Socratic thinkers did at the dawn of speculation. The same approach was characteristic of the medieval mystics, Pascal in the seventeenth century, and Gaston Bachelard in the twentieth century. However with the ascendency of the physical sciences, mathematics, and depth psychology as influences in contemporary ...

Post-Materialist Business presents a spiritual-based approach to business and management. It uses pluralistic view of spirituality and provides a number of inspiring cases of alternative organizations which go beyond the materialistic mindset of business and serve the common good of society, nature, and future generations.

The ecological, social and technological challenges of the Anthropocene require developing and implementing new economic, business, and financial models to create sustainable value for a wide range of stakeholders including nature, society, and future generations. This book defines ‘sustainable value creation’ as bringing forth products, services, organizational forms, processes, actions, and policies which satisfy real social needs and contribute to the ecological regeneration of nature.