Abstract
The chapter explores the questions: (1) How can spirituality be related to business ethics in a general way? and (2) How can spirituality be linked to the stakeholder theory of the firm? The author takes the personalist view inspired by French philosophers Bergson, Maritain, Mounier and Levinas. These philosophers developed a theory of the person that illuminates the relation between spirituality and ethics. Personalists have always criticized the capitalist conception of the enterprise and the primacy of capital on labor. Their alternative was a perspective of economic democracy embedded in the market economy. Personalists’ ultimate aim is not stakeholder management but stakeholder democracy. A contemporary personalist ethics of participation and of economic democracy requires (i) a strong and non-opportunistic commitment to the spiritual emancipation of the human person; (ii) a realistic analysis of the historical context of the new global economy to discover the new opportunities for economic democracy, and (iii) the development of new legal structures for participative entrepreneurship.
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Bouckaert, L. (2011). Spirituality and Economic Democracy. In: Zsolnai, L. (eds) Spirituality and Ethics in Management. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1153-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1153-2_3
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