Practical Compassion: Toward a Critical Spiritual Foundation for Corporate Responsibility

Abstract

In the past two decades neoliberalism as an ideology has had far-reaching consequences on how business organizations view their obligations to different stakeholders. Critiques of neoclassical economic theory, which is the basis of neoliberalism, hold that a series of a priori moral principles lay at its heart (McMurthy;1 Hodgson2). In other words, neoclassical economic theory is a construct based on a set of values and assumptions about human conduct. In this chapter, we introduce an alternative set of values and assumptions for managing people and organizations. We introduce practical compassion, a concept that all religions have in common, to engage with the tensions between organizational ideals (as increasingly captured in purpose statements) and the socioeconomic reality in which such organizations find themselves.