Beyond Self
Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions of Economics
Summary
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 pursuit of their own goals.
Throughout the book the author argues that self-interest-based actions and policies have a detrimental impact on nature, future generations, and society at large. If we want to survive and flourish in the material world we have to transcend the self and embrace wholeness. This value shift requires enormous changes in economics, politics and social life, but there may not be any other option in light of the current state of ecological degradation and human suffering.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the Author
- About the Book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Foreword by Peter Pruzan
- Preface
- Acknowledgement
- Part 1: Introduction
- Chapter 1: Economics, Ethics and Spirituality
- The book’s contributions
- References
- Part 2: Ethics in Business
- Chapter 2: The Moral Economic Man
- 1 Economic Behavior
- 1.1 The Ultimatum Bargaining Game
- 1.2 Choices in Prisoner’s Dilemma Situations
- 1.3 Lost Letter Experiment
- 1.4 Contribution to the Public Good
- 1.5 Trust
- 2 Problems of Rationality
- 2.1 Bounded Rationality
- 2.2 Myopic and Deficient Choices
- 2.3 Rational Fools
- 2.4 The Strategic Role of Emotions
- 2.5 Social Norms
- 2.6 The Communitarian Challenge
- 2.7 Feminist Criticism
- 3 The “I & We” Paradigm
- 4 The Ethical Fabric of the Economy
- 5 Conclusions
- References
- Chapter 3: Corporate Transgressions (co-authors: Albert Bandura and Gian-Vittorio Caprara)
- 1 When Corporations Break the Rules
- 2 Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Agency
- 2.1 Moral Justification
- 2.2 Euphemistic Labeling
- 2.3 Advantageous Comparison
- 2.4 Displacement of Responsibility
- 2.5 Diffusion of Responsibility
- 2.6 Disregarding or Distorting the Consequences
- 2.7 Dehumanization
- 2.8 Attribution of Blame
- 3 The Personality of Corporations
- 4 Moral Disengagement Strategies
- 5 Conclusions
- References
- Chapter 4: Ethical Decision Making
- 1 Perverse Decisions of Modern Organizations
- 1.1 Risky Decisions
- 1.2 Discounting in Space and Time
- 1.3 Self-Centered Organizations
- 2 The Principle of Responsibility
- 3 Making Ethical Decisions
- 3.1 Rationality and Respect
- 3.2 The 3 R Model
- 3.3 Complex Decision Situations
- 3.4 The Maximin Principle
- 4 Analyzing the World Bank Case
- 5 Conclusions
- References
- Chapter 5: Beyond Competitiveness: Creating Values for a Sustainable World (co-author: Antonio Tencati)
- 1 Competitiveness versus Collaboration
- 2 Positive Psychology and the ‘Homo Reciprocans’ Model
- 3 Issues for Future Research
- 3.1 Individual level
- 3.2 Micro level
- 3.3 Meso level
- 3.4 Macro level
- 4 Conclusion
- References
- Part 3: Spirituality in Economics
- Chapter 6: Ethics Needs Spirituality
- 1 Ethical Motivation and Spirituality
- 2 Spiritually-based Leadership
- 3 Why Ethics Needs Spirituality
- References
- Chapter 7: Future of Capitalism
- 1 The Legitimacy of Capitalism
- 2 Competitiveness and its Failures
- 3 World Religions and their Economic Teachings
- 3.1 Jewish Economic Man
- 3.2 Catholic Social Teaching
- 3.3 Buddhist Economics
- 3.4 The Taoist Economy
- 4 Conclusion
- References
- Chapter 8: Why Frugality? (co-authors: Luk Bouckaert and Hendrik Opdebeeck)
- 1 The Frugality Project
- 2 Issues of Frugality
- 3 Conclusion
- References
- Chapter 9: Buddhist Economic Strategy
- 1 Why Buddhism?
- 2 Elements of Buddhist Economics
- 3 Principles of Buddhist Economics
- 3.1 Minimizing Suffering
- 3.2 Simplifying Desires
- 3.3 Practicing Nonviolence
- 3.4 Genuine Care
- 3.5 Generosity
- 4 Not a System but a Strategy
- 5 Conclusion
- References
- Part 4: Responsible Economizing
- Chapter 10: Shallow Success and Deep Failure (co-author: Knut J. Ims)
- 1 The Problem
- 2 The Fallacy of Misplaced Techno-Centrism
- 3 Toward Real Solutions
- 3.1 Self-realization
- 3.2 Greed
- 3.3 Economism
- 3.4 Economic Theory
- 3.5 Relational ontology
- 3.6 Material Flow Analyses
- 3.7 Dialogue between Culture and Economics
- 3.8 Environmental commons
- 3.9 Theory of the Firm
- 3.10 Personal Responsibility
- 3.11 Ecology of Spirit
- References
- Chapter 11: Respect for Future Generations
- 1 Our Obligations to Future Generations
- 2 Accounting for Future Generations
- References
- Chapter 12: The Ethics of Systems Thinking
- 1 The Completeness of Evaluation Criteria
- 2 The Measurement of Evaluation Criteria
- 3 The Problem of Disqualification
- 4 Whole Systems and the Quality of Life
- References
- Chapter 13: Redefining Economic Reason
- 1 Criticizing the Profit Principle
- 1.1 Problems with Profit as the Measure
- 1.2 Problems with Profit as Motivation
- 1.3 Profit and Economic Reason
- 2 Redefining Economic Reason
- 2.1 Ecology
- 2.2 Future Generations
- 2.3 Society
- 2.4 The Laws of Economizing
- References
- Index
- Series Index
About the Author
Laszlo Zsolnai is professor and director of the Business Ethics Center at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He is chairman of the Business Ethics Faculty Group of the CEMS (Community of European Management Schools − The Global Alliance in Management Education). With Luk Bouckaert he founded the European SPES Forum in Leuven, Belgium. He has been guest professor or visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown University, University of Richmond, University of St. Gallen, Bocconi University Milan, and Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. His website: http://laszlo-zsolnai.net
About the Book
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 pursuit of their own goals.
Throughout the book the author argues that self-interest-based actions and policies have a detrimental impact on nature, future generations, and society at large. If we want to survive and flourish in the material world we have to transcend the self and embrace wholeness. This value shift requires enormous changes in economics, politics and social life, but there may not be any other option in light of the current state of ecological degradation and human suffering.
← vi | vii → Foreword
We all look at the world through a personal pair of lenses – those we were born with, those that were culturally molded during our upbringing and education and later on refined via work, social environment, and family experiences, and those that are a result of mature reflection on what is important in one’s life and in the life of others. Without such lenses that simultaneously focus and limit our perspectives we would not be capable of dealing with the enormous inputs from our senses and minds – and we would not be able to develop a sense of person, and with it a sense of what is good and just, on a personal as well as a collective level.
What has all this to do with a Foreword for the book you are about to read? It has to do with the reason why I am so pleased with this book and why I am so pleased with its author. And since the book’s Introduction presents both its motivation and a concise overview of the contents, instead of commenting on the book, the following are a series of reflections on the book’s author, my esteemed colleague and friend, Laszlo Zsolnai, and his many, varied, and significant contributions to the broad field that his lens and this book focus on.
I have had the privilege of knowing and sharing perspectives with Laszlo Zsolnai since we first met in 1997 in connection with the a meeting he organized for CEMS (originally the Community of European Management Schools, now Global Alliance in Management Education, based in Paris). At this meeting he fathered CEMS’s Business Ethics Faculty Group; he is still its active chairman.
My contact with him was strengthened shortly thereafter when he invited me to contribute to the book he edited and published in 1998: Business Ethics in the Community of European Management Schools. In 2000 I attended the Central European University summer program that he led on Business and Ecology in Budapest. And in 2001, I participated in the first European conference on Spirituality in Management that he ← vii | viii → organized in Szeged, Hungary. Within this relatively short time span it became very clear to both of us that our ‘lenses’ were in synch. We not only shared perspectives on the need for expanding economics to include ethical and spiritual dimensions, the central themes in Laszlo’s present book; we also appreciated and respected each other’s person, integrity and search for meaning and fulfillment, that which is beyond words and numbers and analyses. In most of this interaction it was Laszlo who took the initiative.
I have never before encountered an academic who has used so much energy and talent to personally promote the thinking, writing and development of others who, more or less, share the world view that his lens creates and embraces. He has done this throughout his career and he continues to take initiatives, like an intellectual entrepreneur, motivating an ever wider circle of academics to focus their lenses on the ethical and spiritual dimensions of economics.
Like other well-known academics, he has published extensively – well over a hundred articles and book chapters as well as five books, all dealing with the major themes of the present book. Like other international academics, he is also an editor/ member of the editorial board of international journals. However, what distinguishes him from the rest of us is his focus on inspiring other intellectuals, directly or indirectly, both at home in Hungary and in the wide, wide world he inhabits, to contribute to the subversive goal of “undermining the self-interest doctrine” that he refers to in the Introduction to the book.
For example, in addition to being professor at Corvinus University of Budapest and Director of the Business Ethics Center there, he has been guest professor or visiting scholar at such renowned institutions as Cambridge and Oxford universities in the UK, University of California at Berkeley, University of Richmond and Georgetown University in the USA, University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, Heilbronn Business School in Germany, Bocconi University and the European University Institute in Italy, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analyses in Austria and Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Netherlands. This impressive list is far from complete.
He has also been the organizer or co-organizer of significant international conferences in Europe, the USA and Asia that deal with these ← viii | ix → themes. One in particular comes to my mind, the conference on Spirituality in Management that he organized in Szeged, Hungary and which I briefly referred to earlier. At this workshop almost 12 years ago, and as best I know the first of its kind in Europe, he invited leading academics and a few business leaders to chart the progress of a spiritually-based perspective on leadership and to bring together people from around the world who could contribute to the future development of such a challenging and unorthodox paradigm in-the-making.
And finally I note that while most of us concentrate on writing and publishing our own articles and books, Laszlo has continually spent great time and energy in inviting others, both well-established and the lesser-known to focus on a theme within the broad framework of economics, ethics and spirituality, to write about the theme and then editing a book that presents the results. He has done this seventeen – yes seventeen times, as well as in series of books that he edits for major international publishing houses. I know of no other researcher in the broad fields he has covered who so selflessly has devoted so much time and energy to such a relatively thankless endeavor as editing the work of others.
Laszlo Zsolnai exemplifies the concept he introduces in the title of this book: “Beyond Self”, which is the very essence of ethics and spirituality.
Peter Pruzan
Professor emeritus, dr.polit. & Ph.D.
Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy
Details
- Pages
- XIV, 192
- Year
- 2014
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783035305968
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783035398274
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9783035398267
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783034317726
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-3-0353-0596-8
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2014 (April)
- Keywords
- behavior welfare nature society consumption
- Published
- Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2014. XIV, 192 pp., 4 b/w fig., 9 tables
