Management Revue

Introduction: Religion and the Organization Man

Economy and Justice: A Conflict Without Resolution?**

Problems of justice, such as high managerial salaries or the introduction of minimum wages, today arouse a lot of public attention and debate. This hints at the general fact that "justice" cannot be reduced to mere efficiency questions as economists very often tend to assume. Therefore, this paper deals with opportunities to include aspects of social justice in economic analyses. The authors describe the historical development from the Aristotelian concept of justice via the medieval idea of ...

Back to the Future - a Monastic Perspective On Corporate Governance**

The financial crisis is a crisis of governance as well. In search of answers and solutions many scholars and practitioners recommend improved output control, i.e. better external incentives or even stricter regulations. Monasteries demonstrate that alternative models may be more suitable to enhance sustainable governance quality and to reduce agency problems. In the long history of monasteries, some abbots and monks were known to line their own pockets and some monasteries were undisciplined....

Spiritual Cleansing: A Case Study On How Spirituality Can Be Mis/Used by a Company**

Organisational spirituality has gained popularity. While some authors see a spiritually fulfilling workplace as a benefit for employees and organisations alike, critical authors point out the potentially totalising effects of organisations that try to colonise employees' minds, hearts and souls. Whereas most existing critical studies are based on literature analyses and mainly refer to societal developments and how organisations are affected by them, the paper at hand provides a single case s...

On the Proper Essence of Christian Economic Ethics**

In recent times, the question about the proper essence of a Christian economic ethics has rarely been asked explicitly. However, the concept of a post-secular society, as presented by Jürgen Habermas, offers renewed access. The necessary foundation for this approach involves the relationship between belief and reason as the basis for communication, the concept of 'being made in God's own likeness' as regulating factor and the association with the Christian way of life as a prerequisite for re...

William Whyte's 'the Organization Man': A Flawed Central Concept but a Prescient Narrative**

IWilliam H Whyte's concept of organization man is now used in bowdlerized form, shorn of its polemical core. It was an appeal against the situation of people in the big organizations taking shape after World War Two, belonging to the organization rather than simply working for it, earning rewards that are also, in the end, traps. In the current worlds of agile organizations with serially loyal staff these people no longer exist, and in fact the only group that fits the Whyte pattern are dedic...

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters For Global Capitalism, by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, is reviewed.