Managing As If Faith Mattered - (Catholic Social Tradition) by Helen J Alford & Michael J Naughton (Paperback)

About the Book

Alford & Naughton connect ideas such as the common good, virtue, and social principles, with concrete management issues like job design, just wages, corporate ownership, marketing communication, & product development. Economic and social challenges become opportunities for managers to make decisions based on the tenets of Catholic social tradition.

Book Synopsis

Managing As If Faith Mattered, the inaugural volume in the Catholic Social Tradition series, defines the proposed thrust of the new series: to study the very best of what the Catholic social tradition has to offer in response to the pressing issues and problems of our times. Challenging the often-held double standard of private and public moralities, authors Helen Alford and Michael Naughton bridge the fault line between work and faith by engaging current management issues with that tradition.

Alford and Naughton address issues essential to the interface between enterprise and ethics: integrity, personal responsibility, and human solidarity. They consider the practical realities of managers within their economic and human resource environments, and discuss such concrete management issues as job design, just wages, corporate ownership structures, marketing communication, and product development. In their hands, economic and social challenges become opportunities to integrate their beliefs and to make decisions based on the tenets of Catholic social tradition.

Undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in management, business, theology, and ethics will find it an excellent text, and real-life managers will benefit from the practical wisdom it contains.

Review Quotes

"... this inspiring book examines many timely questions related to faith and work through the lens of Christian social tradition. This creative and much needed study will be welcomed warmly by all who are searching for balance in their faith, life, and daily work." --Religious Studies Review

"...[I]nteresting reading... careful attention to logical development demonstration of evidence, and prescriptions for concrete action." --Theology Today

"Managing as if Faith Mattered is a godsend. Intelligent and sensible, it never fails to recognize the realistic tensions of business life. This book is a must for all observers and students of modern business practice, but its usefulness goes further than that: it deserves to be read in every corporate strategic planning office in every company. It is an oasis in the spiritual desert of business." --The Tablet

"The authors take Christian theology and practice seriously and strive for nothing less than a holistic integration that joins work and spirituality." --Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology

"The book deserves to be read carefully and discussed thoughtfully by everyone directly or indirectly involved in business or in business education. ...[T]his book paves the way to a restructuring of business education in a manner that facilitates a discussion of the role of ethical values in every academic course of every discipline of study at all centers of higher education." --American Catholic Studies

"The book focuses on the role of virtues in human management, organization and achievement and shows how they can be applied. This is an intriguing claim which is well deserving of the treatment it receives here." --Theological Book Review

"There is much to be praised in Managing as if Faith Mattered. It does not shirk many of the hard questions, such as the purpose of business, justice in wages, the need for broadening corporate ownership, or the evil of marketing harmful or useless goods. In many cases, it takes a truly courageous stand fully consistent with the radical tradition of papal social teaching. It would indeed be a useful text for seminars among Christian managers and executives trying to rediscover how to make the faith they profess part of their working lives." --New Oxford Review

About the Author

Helen J. Alford, O.P., is dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and co-director of the Ethical Leadership International Program at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Rome, Italy.

Michael J. Naughton holds the Alan W. Moss Endowed Chair in Catholic Social Thought and is director of the John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. He holds joint appointments in the departments of Catholic Studies (College of Arts and Sciences) and Ethics and Law (Opus College of Business).