Humanizing Business : What Humanities Can Say to Business

This book is about humanizing business. In contrast to the mainstream modern management and leadership literature, this book provides distinctly humane perspectives on business. The volume travels outside the world of business to explore what Humanities – such as Philosophy, History, Literature, Creative Arts, and Cultural Studies – can offer to business. Renowned scholars from different Humanities disciplines, as well as management researchers exploring the heritage of Humanities, convey what it actually means to make business more humane.

The book strives to humanize business. It aims to show that it is not people who have to suppress their human feelings, aspirations, and beliefs when they are at their workplaces, but it is business itself that needs to be redefined by the human norms of human beings. Companies should care about their employees and other stakeholders letting them be themselves, i.e. be human, at work and beyond.

The book will be of interestto management scholars across various business disciplines. It can also be used as teaching material in the classroom with MBA students, especially in Business Ethics, Business and Society, Sustainability, Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management and other management courses. The volume will also be of interest to scholars that work in different Humanities fields and whose interests span organizations, management, and business. Finally, many practitioners in the business world, especially those in managerial and leadership positions, will find the book both thought-provoking and useful for them as well.

Chapter 37 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Michel Dion is Full Professor and Chairholder of the CIBC Research Chair on Financial Integrity, École de gestion, Université de Sherbrooke (Québec, Canada). He is also Head of the Department of Management and Human Resources Management. His main fields of research include business ethics; financial crime; management, spirituality, literature, and organization. His scholarly works have been published in Business Ethics: A European Review, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, the International Journal of Organizational Analysis, and the International Journal of Social Economics. His most recent books are Éthique de l’entreprise. Questionnement philosophique (Yvon Blais, 2019); Financial Crime and Existential Philosophy (Springer, 2014). With David Weisstub and Jean-Loup Richet, he was Co-Editor of Financial Crimes: Psychological, Technological, and Ethical Issues (Springer, 2016).

 

Sergiy D. Dmytriyev is Assistant Professor of Management at James Management University. His main areas of research include social issues in management, supererogation in organizations, and stakeholder theory. His scholarly works have been published in Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, and Symphonya. Emerging Issues in Management. His most recent edited books are Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility with Patricia H. Werhane and R. Edward Freeman, Cambridge University Press in 2017; and The Moral Imagination of Patricia Werhane: A Festschrift, with R. Edward Freeman and Andrew C. Wicks, Springer in 2018. Sergiy Dmytriyev teaches strategic management and management consulting in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Prior to joining academia, Sergiy Dmytriyev worked for Bain & Company, Monsanto, and Procter & Gamble.

R. Edward Freeman is University Professor, Elis and Signe Olsson Professor, Academic Director of the Institute for Business in Society, and Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center for Applier Ethics at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is best known for his award-winning book, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman, 1984; and reprinted by Cambridge University Press in 2010). His latest books are The Power of And with Bidhan Parmar and Kirsten Martin, Columbia University Press in 2020; The Cambridge Handbook of Stakeholder Theory with Jeffrey Harrison, Jay Barney and Robert Phillips, Cambridge University Press in 2019; Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility with Patricia Werhane and Sergiy Dmytriyev, Cambridge University Press in 2017, and Bridging the Values Gap with Ellen Auster, Berrett-Koehler Publishers in 2015. He has received six honorary doctorates (Doctor Honoris Causa) from: RadboudUniversity in the Netherlands; Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain; the Hanken School of Economics, and Tampere University in Finland; Sherbrooke University in Canada; and Lauphana University in Germany, for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics. He is a lifelong student of philosophy, martial arts and the blues. Ed Freeman is a founding member of Red Goat Records (redgoatrecords.com) bringing the joy of original soul and rhythm and blues music into the twenty-first century, as well as the host of The Stakeholder Podcast at Spotify.