Handbook of Spirituality and Business

Business ethics, as an academic discipline and a management practice related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), emerged in the late 1970s and the 1980s. It was a promising movement in the shadow of the globalization process. It started in the United States and followed five to ten years later in all industrialized countries, including those in Europe. Some companies developed their first codes of ethics, mission statements and charters of values at that time. Seminars were held for managers in order to look at ethical dilemmas and analyze ethical case studies. The Body Shop, the well-known cosmetics company, went a step further in the 1990s by launching a major social and ethical audit of its operations. Shell, in its famous report “People, Planet and Profits,” applied the notion of sustainable entrepreneurship to a new sort of reporting, which measured and analyzed not only the company’s financial goals and results, but also its ecological and social goals.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term spirituality relates to the soul or spirit and the term religion refers to the existence of a superhuman controlling power, especially God or gods, usually expressed in worship. This is a simple definit ion of a very complex reality. Essentially, the difference between spirituality and religion is not clear because it is about examining the same reality in a different light.

Rationalism gradually attained its dominant position in Western culture from the nineteenth century. By rationalism we mean a way of life dominated by positive science as the ultimate source of truth and/or by utility maximization and rational choice as the ultimate criteria for ethics and management. The consequences of this dominance of the rational in Western culture and business life are ambiguous. On the credit side we find growing prosperity and improved material conditions of life and life expectations. On the debit side are the collapse of communities and the overexploitation of our ecosystems, causing unprecedented problems.

For a synthesis of neuroscience and spirituality to be successful, an understanding and preservation of the fundamentals of science must be merged with an analysis of the cognitive elements of religious and spiritual experiences. This requires an analysis, and perhaps even a definition, of religious and spiritual experience from a neurocognitive perspective. Once a working definition is considered, the cognitive and emotional elements of those experiences can be considered and evaluated on both a theoretical and potentially empirical basis. This can lead to the larger development of a neuroscience of s pirituality.

For over fifty years transpersonal psychology has provided a framework for professionals – including scientists, psychotherapists, and psychologists as well as individuals from different backgrounds – to develop the spiritual aspects of their work and explore matters beyond their everyday personal and material lives. As a concept its strength is confirmed by the increasing number of transpersonal psychotherapists and psychologists, an extensive literature, university posts in transpersonal psychology, and a wide range of associations, seminars, and websites concerned with transpersonal issues. This chapter offers a personal explanation of the transpersonal to a more general public. It indicates associations, websites, and literature for the study of this and related issues in more depth.

The self of decision-makers plays an important role in determining the ethicality of their decisions. Decisions might be understood as self-expressions of the decision-makers. Spiritual experiences have a vital role in developing the self of managers and therefore in improving the ethicality of their decisions. (Zsolnai, 2004)

A gender approach to spirituality does more than give a voice to female authors or record data concerning male or female participation; it reflects on the powerful consequences of divisive and dichotomous thinking and pleas for solidarity and for a more prominent and positive place for experiences of corporeality in spiritual life, anchored in the daily life of men and women across the world.

Critique and spirituality are not commonly associated with one another and it is a relationship that is rarely described. Yet the ancient Greek use of critique as an art of life, as an attitude (ethos), comes close to the meaning of spirituality as the explicit and deep relationships between thought, emotion, consciousness, and inner experience. Telling the personal truth as a moral act toward the agora, the other and the self, is based on consulting the spirit, the center of personal spirit, the diaphragm of the body, the moral judgment, the judgment of taste. Disclosing (inner) truth by means of speech is a critical process and at the same time a process in which mental motives play a fundamental role.

It is commonly put forth that Aristotle’s ethics is a virtue ethics. This is contrasted with ethics that is orientated toward right actions. For Aristotle, this is a pseudo-distinction. One cannot build one’s virtues except through performing right actions. For Aristotle, one performs right actions for their own sake, not for the sake of building virtues or even building character. But the performance of noble deeds, which is the ultimate counsel to life that Aristotle gives, has as its natural consequence the building of virtue and the building of character. This, in turn, brings happiness. Since none of Aristotle’s writings is extant, it is not easy to ferret out Aristotle’s meaning. However, if one reads the lecture notes of Aristotle’s students with some care, it is clear that one should not act for the sake of building character or obtaining happiness. Indeed, the purpose of political society, for Aristotle, is to create a venue for the performance of noble actions. Noble acts, just acts, are the goal for mankind. Nothing else. That happiness flows from this is proof for Aristotle that this is the right path for humankind to take.

The immense diversity and complexity of the 5,000-year-old Indian tradition and culture make it almost impossible to identify one single and unilateral Indian philosophy. Moreover, the concepts developed in the different schools of Indian philosophical systems and the paths outlined often appear conflicting and in contention with each other. This makes the search through this maze of thoughts and ideas difficult and confusing indeed. Hence, in the context of the theme of Spirituality in Business, a few relevant sources of classical Indian literature have been chosen here that may be useful to modern management worldwide as it struggles through a time of turbulence, uncertainty, and crisis for a dawning of wisdom in the minds of business leaders. The texts chosen here include the Upanishads, a veritable treasure house of precious wisdom transmitted in the form of conversations between a teacher/master and a learner/disciple. This exploration may throw some light on the framework and the process of holistic learning for leadership development and the art of asking questions. Toward the end of this paper, a few insights will be shared on decision making and conflict resolution in the time of crisis, as offered in the celebrated Indian text Srimat Bhagavadgita, which is actually a case study of the applied wisdom of the Upanishads in a battlefield on the eve of the unfolding of a drama of death and annihilation. Darshan, the classical Indian (Sanskrit) word for philosophy, is all about seeing to start with. Such seeing is not just a matter of visual reception but organic perception. Thus the philosopher is also a “seer” of reality in its totality, a Rishi.

Buddhist economics is a major alternative to the Western economic mindset. It challenges the basic principles of modern Western economics, namely profit-maximization, cultivating desire, introducing markets, instrumental use of the world, and self-interest-based ethics. Buddhist economics proposes alternative principles such as minimizing suffering, simplifying desire, nonviolence, genuine care, and generosity. Buddhist economics is not a system but a strategy that can be applied in any economic setting.

Confucius’ ideas on economics are few, but through his ethics one may attain an idea of what kind of economics he would have found acceptable. Confucius’ ethics are based upon the natural goodness of human nature. In his mind, human beings are naturally kind to one another. One does not really need the Christian concept of benevolence for Confucius, because benevolence implies that one is going a step beyond what one would ordinarily do. The meaning of benevolence is to be greater than oneself, greater than the normal. For Confucius, kindness is intrinsic to human nature. His is the idea of natural kindness.

Budo philosophy classifies a coherent set of views that has been developed over a period of approximately 400 years as the discursive matrix of the teachings of Japanese martial arts. As a lifestyle it is known as the way (do) of the warrior (bu). The exponentially growing power of the Japanese economy in the 1980s raised questions about the specific role of this martial tradition with its psychology of alertness, determination, endurance, and loyalty. It was thought to be one of the keys to the overwhelming success of Japanese corporations. As a result a vast number of books were published trying to explain the relation between so-called samurai mentality and business.

The goal of a religiously grounded ethics should be to critique, enhance, and strengthen the democratic values and institutions of society. These values include noncoercion, transparency, equal rights, compromise, equality of opportunity, individual and communal responsibility, and many others. To the extent that religious institutions are dedicated to promoting and enlarging democracy, religion can take an open and very active role in the public sphere. By contrast, to the extent that religion exploits the public domain to promote its own particular agenda and parochial needs, it is overreaching and harmful to both society and itself. While this might seem to some too limited a role for religion to play, I disagree. In fact, I think that abiding by the simple rule that religion must support democracy opens up the political debates and allows them to take place in a more honest and forthright way than ever before. Given this framework, this chapter specifically raises the following question: what role can the Jewish tradition play with regard to the contemporary question of income and wealth inequality?

Since the latter part of the nineteenth century the Roman Catholic Church has developed a rich body of teachings, based on Christian spirituality and morality, regarding how a Christian should behave in social life, including in business and other economic activities.1 This is known as Catholic Social Doctrine and also as Catholic Social Teaching (CST). The aim of this chapter is to present a brief outline of such teaching,2 with special reference given to business and economic activities and their connection with Christian spirituality and morality.

During the sixteenth century the Renaissance had rediscovered the fruitfulness of antiquity, from which humanity’s resilience and responsibility were reshaped. Following the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation began. Protestantism was both a belief system and a strategy for liberation from extortion and oppression, an exodus comparable to that of Moses and the Hebrews who had fled from the fleshpots of Egypt.

Islamic economics is an important alternative to the market-based (often termed “Western”) economic model that, in one variant or another, is now found in most formal economic systems worldwide. Islamic economics is, perforce, confined to Muslim-majority countries, but there is no Muslim country whose economy can actually be described as “Islamic.” However, Islamic revivalism worldwide, the sheer number (one billion plus) of Muslims, and their predominance among the world’s petroleum exporters – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Libya (plus some key emerging market economies, such as Malaysia and Turkey) – ensures that Islamic economics will continue to be a serious alternative to Western-style market capitalism. For its advocates, Islamic economics is the “third way” between the two main Western extremes of free market capitalism (with its emphasis on the rational individual’s self-maximizing behavior) and socialism (with its emphasis on social ownership of the means of production and the sublimation of the individual’s needs to those of society’s).

Quaker spirituality centers on listening inwardly and to others. It is a collective spirituality, as Quaker meetings seek a “gathered stillness.” And it is an engaged spirituality practiced through ways of living, speaking and acting in the world. Quaker social values including integrity, equality and community have shaped their approach to business and trade and led them to engage in campaigning and taking action for economic reform.

“Personalism” emerged as a modern philosophical and ethical stance in academic and public debate in the beginning of the twentieth century. Independently from each other, three books were published: in France, Le Personnalisme (1903) by Charles Renouvier; in Germany, Person und Sache (1906) by William Stern; and in the USA, Personalism (1908) by Border Parker Bowne. In each of these philosophical works, there is a strong focus on the uniqueness of the human person and a defense of the person against the mechanisms of depersonalization in society. Personalism stands for a spiritual humanism characterized by a belief that human self-realization has its roots in the deeper sources of the self and not primarily in the ideological, religious, political, or economic systems manipulating and socializing the individual. Only free and responsible persons can engage in joint ventures to make freer and more responsible institutions.

Liberation theology indicates the struggle for a just world as the way to meet God. In working and fighting for socioeconomic justice we can experience grace, fulfillment, and joy along with the hardships of struggle. German theologian Dorothee Sölle has explicitly addressed the relevance of liberation theology for people in Western societies. Her theology may help us to deepen the understanding of the processes of socioeconomic and business reform we are involved in and raise our awareness of the spiritual aspects of these transitions.

The environmental and economic crisis of our era, in which profit counts above people or the planet, is put into question by John Elkington (Elkington, 2004). Elkington elaborates on the triple bottom line (also known as “people, planet, profit”) to capture a broad spectrum of factors for measuring the economic, ecological, and social impacts of the globalization process. Economist and philosopher Ernst Friedrich Schumacher (1911–1977) was already writing about the phenomenon described by Elkington 40 years ago in his theories on a more planet-and people-centered economics. Indeed, looking at the environmental degradation alone makes the faith in progress seem untenable in reality and appears to offer no guarantee for smooth economic progress. In a special edition of Time (April/May 2000) on How to Save the Earth, Schumacher was described as one of the heroes of the planet.

In this chapter I set out to clarify what it means to be human and the implications of this for business from a Bahá’í perspective. I aim at holding the Bahá’i worldview up to be examined so that it can be compared with others and contribute to alternative ways of theorizing about management and the ends it pursues.

In aboriginal cultures, elders are teachers. Their teachings are inevitably lessons in proper behavior and “right living” based upon an earth-based cosmology – a deep understanding of the land (the physical universe) and the behavior of its creatures.

Over the past several months we have been listening to and reading many explanations about the technical, political, juridical, ethical, cultural, and even psychological causes of the financial and economic world crisis. However, not very much has been said about its spiritual dimension. The reason for this could be that we seldom use the terms “spirit” or “spiritual” in relation to economic issues. Besides, we also tend to identify or subsume under the terms “ethical” or “psychological” other specifically different human phenomena that cannot really be so simply identified with the former. In this chapter I will argue that the crisis shows us, apart from these other dimensions, a specific spiritual dimension. I will also assume a meaning of spirituality understood as our deepest –or highest – activity as human beings, through which we can communicate at some point with the ultimate roots of ourselves that constitute us as beings and with our ultimate ends that orientate and give a final meaning and purpose to our lives.

Materialistic values reflect the priority that individuals give to goals such as money, possessions, image, and status. Confirming the concerns of many spiritual traditions, empirical research supports the idea that materialistic and spiritual values are relatively incompatible aims in life. For instance, research shows that the more that people focus on materialistic goals, the less they tend to care about spiritual goals. Further, while most spiritual traditions aim to reduce personal suffering and to encourage compassionate behaviors, numerous studies document that the more people prioritize materialistic goals, the lower their personal well-being and the more likely they are to engage in manipulative, competitive, and ecologically degrading behaviors.

Avarice, or greed, is a capital sin that rarely emerges as such. Rather, from case to case it is dressed up as avidity, cupidity, covetousness, usury, lust for wealth, love of money, stinginess, meanness. From the annoyance that other people’s avarice triggers, the miser may infer how the others feel about him. Out of amour propre, the greedy man is induced to act as if he were not greedy. The capacity of avarice for camouflage is such that in some circumstances it may even resemble virtue, as Juvenal intuited. Prudentius, in his celebrated Psychomachia (405AD) – an allegorical poem narrating seven fierce battles for the conquest of souls, each pitting a deadly sin against the matching virtue – says of greed that when this sin fails to capture the souls of the faithful (including priests) by force, it does so by stealth. By feigning a certain nobility of the spirit, avarice conceals its true attributes, so that greed and stinginess are attributed to the laudable aim of providing for the needs of one’s children. Laying down its arms, avarice thus disguises itself as parsimony, becoming – Prudentius writes – “that virtue which is called economy” (in the end, however, operatio definitively defeats avaritia). There are many terms for avarice or greed, and if we want to understand its specific nature we must look into its many styles and consider its semantics as they have developed and have been articulated over time.

Globalization is a widely used term that is the subject of various definitions and interpretations. It can be described both as an ongoing transformation process and as an outcome, but it is not a new phenomenon; its historical origins themselves are debated – should they be situated in the modern era, or much before, for instance in the Hellenistic age? Globalization refers to the integration of economies, societies, and cultures around the globe, through the development of trade, communication, and technological advances; at the political level, it entails the weakening of the power of states and the rise of transnational actors. The business community, whose internationalization has played a major role in fueling the globalization movement, has been heaved into the turmoil of accusations and appeals to its sense of responsibility. The aim of this article is to synthesize the historical debate so as to try to elaborate a conception of the globalization process that, on a theoretical level, gives it meaning and, on a practical level, indicates ways to transcend new, planetary risks.

Deep ecology is an alternative philosophy also called ecophilosophy as well as a campaign platform. As ecophilosophy, deep ecology is a fundamental approach to environmental problems and focuses on underlying causes, the roots of problems. It assumes a relational, total-field perspective that fits into a holistic, nonreductionist, nonanthropocentric worldview. It is in contrast to shallow ecology, which represents the technocratic attitude to pollution and resource depletion. Shallow ecology uses rules such as “the polluter pays” and assumes that treating the symptoms through technological quick fixes will reduce the ecological footprint. According to deep ecology, we have to change the basic ideological structure, which ultimately means changing ourselves.

There are signs that the global climate may be close to a tipping point for transition to a warmer world. Amid calls for transition to a zero-carbon economy, politicians and much of the public are in denial. Their preferred technological and market solutions will be insufficient; a transformation is needed in our way of life. The spiritual dimension of the challenge has been neglected. It demands that we question the nature of self, our relationships with each other, the Earth and the beyond, our ways of life, and our sources of meaning.

There are many definitions of ecological sustainability. I consider that ecological sustainability, in the context of organizational functioning, involves learning to operate all of our enterprises today in such a way that there are nondeclining resources and abundant, high-quality choices available to future generations. Much has been written and talked about in the realm of ecological sustainability and the role of organizations in promoting a sustainable and high-quality presence on the planet for future generations, and many organizations have taken significant steps in the direction of ecological sustainability. However, the overall picture at present is bleak, as we realize how much is still needed to secure a sustainable future.

Future generations are not-yet-born human beings. In practice we can envisage future generations as people living in the next 150–200 years. Activities of present generations affect the fate of future generations, for better or worse. What we do with our natural and cultural heritage mainly determines the way future generations can live their own life.

I used to explain my decision, sometime around 2001, to write a book about the growing demand for authenticity, by telling the story of a dinner party (Boyle, 2001). A friend of mine had told us why he had bought a flat in Paris. It was, he said, “because they have real shops there.” Thinking about it afterwards, I realized that this was not “real” in any of its conventional definitions, yet everyone knew immediately what he meant. He meant tiny, colorful, family-owned stores, full of evocative smells and baking on the premises, in neighborhoods where the customers might be known by name to the shopkeeper.

We can define frugality as art de vivre, which implies low material consumption and a simple lifestyle to open the mind for spiritual goods such as inner freedom, social peace, justice, or the quest for “ultimate reality.” Frugality as a conception of the good life has deep philosophical and religious roots in the East and the West. Monks and religious people all over the world practice it in different forms of asceticism, self-restriction, or freely chosen poverty (“voluntary simplicity”). But even secular philosophers in the tradition of Epicurean ethics or Stoicism emphasize that frugal tastes and lasting enjoyment go hand in hand. Whereas for religious ethics frugality is a spiritual virtue, for secular ethics it is a rational virtue to enhance happiness. Although both of these approaches, the rational as well as the spiritual, do promote similar practices of self-restriction, their deeper motivational structure is very different. We will explore rational theories of frugality, the economics of frugality, and a spiritual concept and practice of frugality.1

The expression “civil economy” is now recurrent in academic discussion as in the media, but it carries multiple, sometimes conflicting meanings. Some confuse it with the expression “social economy,” while others maintain that “civil economy” is just a different, older name for “political economy.” There are those who identify the term with the variegated world of nonprofit organizations, and others who go so far as to see civil economy as an intellectual project opposed to the economy of solidarity. Misunderstandings and incomprehension of this sort not only complicate dialogue between thinkers who legitimately espouse different worldviews; what is worse is that ignorance of what civil economy is, instead of inducing intellectual humility, often feeds ideological prejudices and is used to justify sectarian closed-mindedness.

Spiritual-based leadership (SBL) challenges and supplements the two primary rationales underlying the theory and practice of management: scientific rationality and economic rationality. Although far from mainstream at present, the concept of SBL is emerging as an inclusive, holistic, and yet highly personal approach to leadership that integrates a leader’s inner perspectives on identity, purpose, responsibility, and success with her or his decisions and actions in the outer world of business – and therefore SBL is also emerging as a significant framework for understanding, practicing, communicating, and teaching the art and profession of leadership in business (Pruzan, 2008).

As in the severe economic downturn of the early eighties, there is again a call for new leadership in the aftermath of the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unlike the eighties it is suggested here that we look towards the East, rather than the West, the origin of the greed-is-good kind of capitalism, for a new paradigm of deep leadership. In October 2006, just before the outbreak of the credit crisis, Business Week reported on the apparent emergence of a new type of capitalism, karma capitalism, which may not have been such a bad idea after all. Some successful Indian companies, for example, may constitute the cutting edge of this new paradigm of leadership in the business world.

In this chapter we explore the specific potential of an enterprise to engage meaningfully with the transformational capacity embedded in a particular societal culture. We shall further illustrate how such an engagement can become a key source of knowledge creation and innovation. We distinguish, as such, between a process of engagement within a particular culture and that between diverse cultures. While the first addresses the recognition and activation of the cultural force within a society, and thereby relates to the local identity of a social system, the latter demonstrates the relevance of meaningful cocreation between the local and the global.

Mindfulness, an ancient spiritual practice adapted for modern times, builds quality and strength of character along with an enlarged scope of vision; business, the epitome of the material plane, represents core material needs – but crass materialism, greed, and planetary and human destruction can follow in their wake. In what ways are these two apparent opposites related? Where do the two worlds, spirit and matter, meet?

“To be human is to search for a meaningful life.” It’s all very well to say this, but how do we attend to meaningful living? How do we stay in charge of our ability to make a conscious choice to live a meaningful life? How do we recognize when life is not meaningful, and then, what can we do about it? How can we share our search for meaning with others while retaining our unique identity? These questions have urgency because they relate to so many experiences and decisions in our working lives. In this chapter we describe a framework (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2009) that has been used in ten years of action research and has been peer-reviewed by our academic colleagues. We have found that using this framework enables people to have conversations about what is deeply meaningful in the workplace.

The common-good concept has been developed mainly in the context of Western philosophy since Plato and Aristotle, and within Christian theology since St Thomas Aquinas. The idea that the state is the guarantor of the common good at the national level has long prevailed; however, this view is increasingly questioned by the relentless advance of the globalization process, and by the emergence of global risks and threats of all kinds at the planetary level. Quite logically, multinational companies, owing to their huge economic power, to their capacity to influence and to the multiple consequences of their activities, are the focus of much interest among those who strive to devise new ways to serve the common good – and more precisely, the global common good.

Institution-building is one primary form of humankind’s sharing in the continuing work of a Creator; it is a kind of “co-creation.” But each institution must – in its own way – advance human dignity and the common good. Thus we are called not only to build institutions, but to impart moral sensibilities to the institutional “work of our hands.”

What is the role of business in society? This essay argues that we are in the midst of a major paradigm shift in our understanding of the purpose of business and that this new understanding holds much promise for business being a significant force for peace in our world. Examples of what companies are doing and why they are doing it will be provided. What we are seeing is the emergence of a view of the firm as a socially responsible political actor in the global economy and as an institution that can generate not only material wealth but also wealth that nourishes the full range of human needs, or what some call spiritual capital (Williams, 2008).

The Self-Assessment and Improvement Process (SAIP) is a method that enables organizations to appraise and enhance their performance on issues of ethics. By adapting techniques taken from Total Quality Management (TQM), it extends a venerable spiritual and moral discipline – the examination of conscience – from the realm of the individual to that of the firm. The SAIP transforms ethical principles into a systematic inventory of questions. Responding to these questions and scoring their answers allows leaders to identify where vital moral values have been integrated within their organization’s operations and where this integration is tenuous or lacking. Applied at regular intervals, the method helps an organization develop as a moral agent, bringing its performance into greater conformity with recognized standards for ethically responsible conduct.

An Edgewalker Organization is an organization that seeks to be on the leading edge, is curious about what is emerging just over the horizon, supports creativity and innovation, and nurtures the human spirit. The organization develops collective methods of knowing the future. It encourages risk-taking. The leaders understand how to use vision, imagery, and inspiration to paint a picture of a desired future. Employees are imaginative, empowered, and know how to create what has never been created before.

The Economy of Communion (EoC), the model of the Focolare Movement, may provide a solution to integrating spirituality and the economy. In the EoC, entrepreneurs are inspired by principles rooted in a culture different than what prevails in conventional practice and theory of economics. We can define this “culture” as a “culture of giving,” which is the antithesis of a “culture of having.” Since the inception of the concept almost two decades ago, it has been developed from an idea to a proven practice: it is a project involving hundreds of companies spanning five continents and numerous industries and countries, and it has attracted the interest of scholars and economists alike.

The notion of ethical branding emerged in Europe in the 1980s. It accompanied the emergence of ethical consumerism, which represented a segment of less than 5 percent of consumers in western markets (but significant enough to those NGOs and church-based organizations calling for a fair deal for developing world farmers in particular, and for fairer supply chains more generally). The fair-trade movement, exemplified by Max Havelaar (Switzerland) and the Fairtrade Foundation (UK), began to gain media coverage for their claims that brands, and coffee brands in particular, were exploiting farmers in the developing world. In 1998 the Ethical Trading Initiative was formed in the UK as an alliance of mainstream corporations, trade unions and NGOs, with the intent of improving transparency and the protection of human rights in company supply chains through adopting the “Base Code.” The early fair-trade brands campaigned for social justice, animal welfares and the promotion of natural substances in the production of groceries (e.g., Gepa), beverages (e.g., Café Direct), chocolate and ice cream (e.g., Green & Blacks and Ben & Jerry’s), textiles and handicrafts (e.g., Traidcraft and Gepa), and cosmetics (e.g., The Body Shop).

The Fair Trade movement seeks to address the problems of disadvantaged and small-scale producers in the underdeveloped countries by providing market access to their products through trading partnerships. The Fair Trade movement is backed by ethically conscious consumers, who are ready to pay a higher price for products that improve the well-being of marginalized producers as well as their communities. The Fair Trade partnership provides better trading conditions, higher prices, and a continuous relationship with the producers; it also ensures that human rights and environmental concerns are respected, and that children are not exploited in the production process. Fair Trade is a well-established and fast-growing alternative business model to the mainstream way of economizing and trading. It uses a different set of values and objectives than traditional trade, institutionalizing solidarity and putting people and their well-being, as well as the preservation of the natural environment, before the pursuit of the profit.

The values-driven approach of ethical, sustainable, social, alternative, development, or solidarity banking and financial institutions provides space and tools for more reflection, consciousness, and responsibility in the use of money. Greater consciousness is a prerequisite in the constant search for quality of life, not only for oneself but for all life. This is true for material matters as well as cultural and spiritual ones. And it leads to taking initiative and responsibility individually, locally, and globally, because we are now more interconnected than ever and compelled to collaborate rather than compete.