Research indicates that religious values and ethical behavior are closely associated, yet, at a firm level, the processes by which this association occurs are poorly understood. Family firms are known to exhibit values-based behavior, which in turn can lead to specific firm-level outcomes. It is also known that one’s family is an important incubator, enabler, and perpetuator of religious values across successive generations. Our study examines the experiences of a single, multigenerational business family that successfully enacted their religious values in (...) their business. Drawing upon intergenerational solidarity and values-based leadership theory, and by way of an interpretive, qualitative analysis, we find that the family’s religious values enhanced their cohesion and were manifested in their leadership style, which, in turn, led to outcomes for the business. Our findings highlight the processes that underlie the relationship between religious values and organizational outcomes in family firms and offer insights into the role of solidarity in values-based leadership. (shrink)

Earth system science (ESS) has identified worrying trends in the human impact on fundamental planetary systems. In this conceptual article, we discuss the implications of this research for business schools and management education (ME). We argue that ESS findings raise significant concerns about the relationship between business and nature and, consequently, a radical reframing is required to embed economic and social activity within the global sustainability of natural systems. This has transformative implications for ME. To illustrate this reframing, we apply (...) the ESS lenses of social-ecological interdependence, multiscalar relations, environmental governance, and environmental values to the ME functional domains of institutional purpose, social context and engagement, pedagogical practice, curricular design, and research focus. Our work contributes to the literature on business education for sustainability and the business-society-nature nexus. We explore and apply key ESS findings and concepts, discuss normative implications of these ideas, and offer guidance on transformational pathways for business schools and ME. (shrink)

The evaluation of new theories and pedagogical approaches to business ethics is an essential task for ethicists. This is true not only for empirical and applied evaluation but also for metatheoretical evaluation. However, while there is increasing interest in the practical utility and empirical testing of ethical theories, there has been little systematic evaluation of how new theories relate to existing ones or what novel conceptual characteristics they might contribute. This paper aims to address this lack by discussing the role (...) of metatheorising in assessing new approaches to ethics. The approach is illustrated through evaluating a new pedagogy and curriculum for ethics education called Giving Voice to Values (GVV). Our method involves identifying a number of metatheoretical lenses from existing reviews of ethical theories and applying these to examine GVV’s conceptual elements. Although GVV has been explicitly presented as a pedagogy and teaching curriculum, we argue that it has the potential to contribute significantly to the development of ethical theory. We discuss the general implications of this metatheoretical method of evaluation for new approaches to business ethics and for GVV and its future development. (shrink)

In studies of early Christian thought, 'philosophy' is often a synonym for 'Platonism', or at most for 'Platonism and Stoicism'. Nevertheless, it was Aristotle who, from the sixth century AD to the Italian Renaissance, was the dominant Greek voice in Christian, Muslim and Jewish philosophy. Aristotle and Early Christian Thoughtis the first book in English to give a synoptic account of the slow appropriation of Aristotelian thought in the Christian world from the second to the sixth century. Concentrating on the (...) great theological topics - creation, the soul, the Trinity, and Christology - it makes full use of modern scholarship on the Peripatetic tradition after Aristotle, explaining the significance of Neoplatonism as a mediator of Aristotelian logic. While stressing the fidelity of Christian thinkers to biblical presuppositions which were not shared by the Greek schools, it also describes their attempts to overcome the pagan objections to biblical teachings by a consistent use of Aristotelian principles, and it follows their application of these principles to matters which lay outside the purview of Aristotle himself. This volume offers a valuable study not only for students of Christian theology in its formative years, but also for anyone seeking an introduction to the thought of Aristotle and its developments in Late Antiquity. by a consistent use of Aristotelian principles, and it follows their application of these principles to matters which lay outside the purview of Aristotle himself. This volume offers a valuable study not only for students of Christian theology in its formative years, but also for anyone seeking an introduction to the thought of Aristotle and its developments in Late Antiquity. (shrink)

Seeing and hearing God in the Old Testament -- Seeing and hearing God in the New Testament -- Word and image in classical Greek philosophy -- Philosophers and sophists of the early Roman era -- Image, text and incarnation in the second century -- Image, text and incarnation in the third century -- Neoplatonism and the arts -- Image, text and incarnation in the fourth century -- Myth and text in proclus -- Christianity of Christian Platonism.

Business schools around the globe are seeking effective ways of incorporating business ethics into their programs (Melé 2008, Swanson 2004). Indications from both the market and accrediting bodies suggest best-practice programs will include ethics education. However, the debate continues as to whether meaningful learning is best achieved through stand-alone ethics experiences or via an integrated theme across the program of study (Tesfayohannes & Driscoll 2010, Wilhelm 2005). While many examples of required ethics-experiences can be found, to date, there is only (...) one business school that we are aware of that has implemented a required full-term postgraduate ethics course based on the Giving Voice To Values (GVV) (Gentile 2008) philosophy and content.The purpose of this article is to share the tacit knowledge gained in the authors’ experience of implementing such a course at the University of Western Australia’s Business School. (shrink)

It has been claimed that a broad attentional breadth buffers the impact of negative stimuli on human perception and cognition. Here we identify issues with the research on which this claim is based, and then rigorously test the claim. To induce narrow versus broad attentional breadth participants attended to the local versus global elements of Navon stimuli, and to investigate the impact of emotionally salient stimuli on performance we measured the effect of task-irrelevant stimuli of varying emotional salience (negative, neutral, (...) or positive) on task performance. Across a series of experiments, we found that the Navon stimuli were effective in inducing different attentional breadths, and that both negative and positive task-irrelevant stimuli slowed responses relative to neutral stimuli, but that the magnitude of this emotion-induced slowing was invariant to whether attentional breadth was broad or narrow. This indicates that a broad attentional breadth did not buffer against the effect of either negative or positive emotionally salient stimuli. These results challenge the claim the broadening attentional breadth protects against the impact of emotionally salient stimuli. (shrink)

This Handbook contains forty essays by an international team of experts on the antecedents, the content, and the reception of the Dionysian corpus, a body of writings falsely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, a convert of St Paul, but actually written about 500 AD. The first section contains discussions of the genesis of the corpus, its Christian antecedents, and its Neoplatonic influences. In the second section, studies on the Syriac reception, the relation of the Syriac to the original Greek, and (...) the editing of the Greek by John of Scythopolis are followed by contributions on the use of the corpus in such Byzantine authors as Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, Niketas Stethatos, Gregory Palamas, and Gemistus Pletho. In the third section attention turns to the Western tradition, represented first by the translators John Scotus Eriugena, John Sarracenus, and Robert Grosseteste and then by such readers as the Victorines, the early Franciscans, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dante, the English mystics, Nicholas of Cusa, and Marsilio Ficino. The contributors to the final section survey the effect on Western readers of Lorenzo Valla's proof of the inauthenticity of the corpus and the subsequent exposure of its dependence on Proclus by Koch and Stiglmayr. The authors studied in this section include Erasmus, Luther and his followers, Vladimir Lossky, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jacques Derrida, as well as modern thinkers of the Greek Church. Essays on Dionysius as a mystic and a political theologian conclude the volume. (shrink)

Business schools around the globe are seeking effective ways of incorporating business ethics into their programs. Indications from both the market and accrediting bodies suggest best-practice programs will include ethics education. However, the debate continues as to whether meaningful learning is best achieved through stand-alone ethics experiences or via an integrated theme across the program of study. While many examples of required ethics-experiences can be found, to date, there is only one business school that we are aware of that has (...) implemented a required full-term postgraduate ethics course based on the Giving Voice To Values philosophy and content.The purpose of this article is to share the tacit knowledge gained in the authors’ experience of implementing such a course at the University of Western Australia’s Business School. (shrink)

We apply an action-oriented approach to business ethics education, Giving Voice to Values (GVV), to the topic of sustainability. The increasingly problematic impact of unsustainable economic activity is demanding actionable responses from business. However, traditional business ethics education has focussed on awareness and decision-making and neglected action-oriented methods. The GVV curriculum offers an applied and process-driven ethics approach thatcomplements more analytical ethics pedagogies. Because of its focus on action and expressing personal values, GVV can be thought of as largely applicable (...) to the micro-level of interpersonal interactions. This paper illustrates GVV’s potential for much broader application by presenting two caselettes spanning the micro-level of workplace refurbishment to the global-level of the mass dumping of electronic waste. Ways of crafting conversations around these sustainability issues are presented and implications of the GVV approach for both the teaching and practice of sustainability ethics are discussed. (shrink)

We apply an action-oriented approach to business ethics education, Giving Voice to Values (GVV), to the topic of sustainability. The increasingly problematic impact of unsustainable economic activity is demanding actionable responses from business. However, traditional business ethics education has focussed on awareness and decision-making and neglected action-oriented methods. The GVV curriculum offers an applied and process-driven ethics approach thatcomplements more analytical ethics pedagogies. Because of its focus on action and expressing personal values, GVV can be thought of as largely applicable (...) to the micro-level of interpersonal interactions. This paper illustrates GVV’s potential for much broader application by presenting two caselettes spanning the micro-level of workplace refurbishment to the global-level of the mass dumping of electronic waste. Ways of crafting conversations around these sustainability issues are presented and implications of the GVV approach for both the teaching and practice of sustainability ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This paper argues that at First Principles 2.3.6 Origen is responding to Gnostics who used a particular reading of Plato’s myths about the afterlife to justify their own belief that the elect will go after death into an incorporeal state. It examines the use of the terms idea and phantasia in commentary on Plato’s Phaedo; the evidence for Origen’s knowledge of such commentary; the evidence which allegedly shows that Origen himself believed in an incorporeal paradise; and the evidence that Gnostics (...) in the third century drew on Platonic eschatology. (shrink)

Religions of the Constantinian Empire provides a synoptic review of Constantine's relation to all the cultic and theological traditions of the Empire during the period from his seizure of power in the west in 306 ᴄᴇ to the end of his reign as autocrat of both east and west in 337 ᴄᴇ. Divided into three parts, the first considers the efforts of Christians to construct their own philosophy, and their own patterns of the philosophic life, in opposition to Platonism. The (...) second assembles evidence of survival, variation or decay in religious practices which were never compulsory under Roman law. The "religious plurality" of the second section includes those cults which are represented as demonic burlesques of the sacraments by Firmicus Maternus. The third reviews the changes, both within the church and in the public sphere, which were undeniably prompted by the accession of a Christian monarch. In this section on "Christian polyphony", Mark Edwards expertly moves on from this deliberate petrifaction of Judaism to the profound shift in relations between the church and the civic cult that followed the Emperor's choice of a new divine protector. (shrink)

While Sceptics canvassed arguments against the existence of any gods, and Cynics were abrasive in their strictures on conventional religion, late antiquity offers no indubitable evidence of naked disbelief in the divine. Christians were called atheists because they abstained from popular and mandatory acts of worship, Epicureans because they denied the providential ordering of the world. In Christian literature the term is applied both to pagans, on account of their failure to recognise the true God, and to heretics who denied (...) God any part in the creation or governance of the material realm. The ‘fool’ of Psalm 53.1 was characterized by some commentators as an absolute atheist by others only as a practical atheist. Christians of the early middle ages often accepted that the pagan gods had existed, either as demons or as humans who had merited special notoriety. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to ascertain how ancient Greek and Latin authors, both pagan and Christian, formulated and answered what is now called the problem of evil. The survey ranges chronologically from the classical and Hellenistic eras, through the Roman era, to the end of the pagan world. Six of the twelve chapters are devoted to Christianity (including Manichaeism), as one thesis of the book is that the problem of evil takes an acute form only for Christians, since (...) no other philosophy of antiquity posits a personal God exercising providence over individuals without having to overcome countervailing forces. None the less it will also be shown that Greek philosophies, Platonism in particular, come close to the Christian formulation. Being conscious of the affinity between Greek thought and their own, early Christians respond to the problem of evil in the same way as the philosophers, by questioning the existence of evil rather than of the divine. (shrink)

This chapter examines the ‘long recension’ of the corpus of letters attributed to the early second-century Christian bishop Ignatius of Antioch. The ‘long recension’, now generally agreed to be a spurious addition to Ignatius’ genuine letters, alters the text of the genuine letters and adds new letters to new correspondents. Three purposes for the forgery may be imagined: first, for entertainment; second, to show that Ignatius was orthodox at a time when his status was in doubt; third, to invoke Ignatius’ (...) authority in some then-current debate. This chapter argues that there is evidence for all three motives, and examines related questions, such as how this example of Christian pseudepigraphy differs from others, and to what degree it requires that the reader be deceived. (shrink)