Abstract
This special issue is a bold attempt at cross-disciplinary collaboration. Business management and humanities faculty from three continents working on German, American, Chinese and Indian contexts contribute scholarship on the intertwining of business and benevolence. With attention to this journal’s recent shift in focus to uncovering ‘values’, not only the religious or spiritual but also the secular, this special issue examines benevolence through a study of both corporate and religious institutions, and from the perspectives of individuals, corporations and states. Specifically, we consider employer–employee and corporate–society relations in corporations that engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR), as well as the interplay of ethics and economics inherent in the ways that religious leaders allocate donations made explicitly to Buddhist institutions. In other words, through this special issue, an attempt is made to understand the various facets of institutional benevolence—be it corporations or religious institutions —and to identify the role of ‘business’ in such cohorts.
Our study shows that CSR is often understood as a moral imperative—including and especially in a time of a global pandemic like COVID-19—and that a corporation’s commitment to CSR is becoming increasingly attractive to individual employees. Many young employees in particular make career decisions based on the extent to which employers will allow their individual social responsibility (ISR) to be supported by CSR policies. Benevolence is a value that is attractive to corporations and corporate leaders for reasons beyond profit, and yet it may be profitable as well. The contributions to Buddhism demonstrate that it is just as difficult to disentangle benevolence and profit when it comes to religious corporations in the form of Buddhist sites. Religious tourism in both India and China has the effect of spreading and popularizing Buddhism, albeit in altered forms. As Buddhist temples and monasteries attract more and more visitors (be they tourists or devotees), donations are put to use in social engagement projects including educating the poor and protecting the environment, rather than focusing merely on maintaining traditional ritual practices.
In each of these cases, acts of benevolence take on new meaning in the twenty-first century as corporations are held to greater account for their actions in a global economic context of widening inequality, and as religious sites along with so many other aspects of human life become increasingly commodified. The consequences of those acts are sometimes unintended, and reflect as well as produce new dynamics between individuals, institutions and societies.
Business and Benevolence from a Business Management Perspective
Business, in a layman’s term, would imply ‘a commercial or industrial activity or organization’ with synonyms like company, concern, enterprise, establishment and firm (Merriam-Webster, n.d.), while benevolence can be defined as being ‘kind and helpful’ and/or ‘giving money or help to people or organizations that need it’ (Cambridge English Dictionary, n.d.), and its synonyms include being compassionate, generous, humane, philanthropic, altruistic and humanitarian, among others (Thesaurus, n.d.).
Friedman (1962, 1970) in 1962 proposed that the main purpose of businesses is to maximize profit. This theory implies that directors of an organization are agents of the owners and are duty bound to maximize the interests of those owners, who had made the investment, in the first place (Dvorak et al., 2000; Rappaport, 1998; Rath & Gurtoo, 2012; Shirouzu, 2000; Sternberg, 1994; Taylor, 1999).
However, this narrow view of a business’s purpose met with much criticism from management scholars. Theorists like Freeman (1984), Clarkson (1995), Lazer (1996) and Carroll (1999) believed that businesses owe something back to the society that supports them, and that this debt is greater than the debt of any individual member of the society. Referred to as the social contract approach and based on the principle of communitarian ethics, it believes that corporations should be socially responsible, both out of gratitude for their existence and a moral sense of reciprocation for benefits received from the society (Alchian & Demsetz, 1972; Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Rath & Gurtoo, 2012).
However, it was Freeman (1984), who argued that ‘the 21st Century is one of “Managing for Stakeholders.” The task of the executives is to create as much value as possible for stakeholders without resorting to trade-offs. Great companies endure because they manage to get stakeholder interests aligned in the same direction.’ The stakeholder here, in its widest sense, is defined as any identifiable group or individual that can affect the achievement of organizational objectives or who is affected by the achievement of organizational objectives (Clarkson, 1995; Freeman & Reed, 1983; Rath & Gurtoo, 2012).
Thus, the concept of benevolence was ingrained in the concept of business purpose. Interestingly, all three of the above views fall within the various theories and concepts of CSR, that is, the shareholder value, societal value and stakeholder value respectively.
Aras and Crowther (2013) observed that although CSR has been one of the most debated management issues, with both academics and practitioners trying to define the concept and justifying why corporations should adopt ethical and socially responsible behaviour, it faces a ‘lack of consensus on what the concept means, what it entails, why it should be embraced, how it should be operationalized, what its roles are in achieving organizational effectiveness or performance, and a lot of other issues bordering on the concept’.
It becomes even more complex, when in the course of study, one finds out that the concept of CSR also varies from developed to emerging economies. CSR is the phrase generally used by management thinkers and academicians for discussion and research purposes, but it goes by many names when browsed through the websites for the Fortune 500 Companies, that includes ‘corporate citizenship, corporate philanthropy, corporate giving, corporate community involvement, community relations, community affairs, community development, corporate responsibility, global citizenship, corporate societal marketing’ to name a few (Kotler & Lee, 2005).
Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) debate whether or not CSR is a cost for mere window dressing to avoid legislation or an investment with the potential to add and increase competitive strengths. Governments, on the other hand, debate whether CSR should be legislated or remain voluntary (Isaksson et al., 2014) resulting in some MNCs engaging in CSR voluntarily and others being ‘forced’ to engage in CSR—regardless of whether they believe in the concept or not.
Over the years, there has been an upsurge of research done in this space and several intangible benefits have been observed by implementing CSR (Table 1).
Examples of Intangible Benefits (Outcomes) of CSR
However, what is interesting to note here is that although CSR may be a direct link to the ‘benevolent’ purpose of business, it can also be the other way around—business becomes the output for benevolence (Figure 1).
In fact the concept of business purpose in the twenty-first century is seeing the emergence of B Corporations—purpose-driven companies wherein business is elevated from mere profit-maximizing venture to purpose-attaining venture that also makes money.
Business and Benevolence from a Humanities Perspective
In the Humanities disciplines—religious studies in particular—business and benevolence have been studied with a more critical lens. Lofton (2017), for example, shows that corporations exercise extraordinary power over societies. In many democratic countries, they are able to defy laws while claiming ‘individual conscience’ or ‘religious freedom’ with far more ease than individuals claiming the same. In Lofton’s words, ‘Currently in the annals of public opprobrium, it is better to be a corporation than a human being’ (Lofton 2017, p. 200). When corporations claim to act on behalf of the greater good, it is the corporations themselves that decide what that greater good is.
Moreover, multiple studies (Carrette & King, 2005; Gonzalez, 2015; Moreton, 2009; Porterfield et al., 2017) have shown that practices of employee well-being, including the use of values training idioms like ‘servant leadership,’ and spiritual practices like yoga and meditation that are aimed at cultivating healthy workplaces have the effect of creating more disciplined and productive workers. They make corporate workers feel good about the extraordinary labour they are putting into their work, often at the expense of their health and broader happiness. These are part of the process whereby late capitalism is ‘enchanted’ (Porterfield et al., 2017, p. 14). Without impugning the motivations of individual corporate leaders, one wonders if the acts of corporate benevolence might be understood in the same way.
While studies like Lofton’s critique the authority and ability of corporations to decide on what constitutes the greater good, they also point to the fact that there may not always be a clear distinction between benevolence (or other ethical values) and the profit motive. Further and even more recent studies have focused on the very close inter-animation of religion and economics both within corporate contexts and outside them. Singh (2018), for example, argues that early Christian theologians from the third century onwards incorporated notions of debt, sacrifice and even money into their understandings of Jesus, fundamentally shaping Christianity itself. Similarly, Nagarajan (2018) recalls the Hindu notion that all humans are born with three (or five, depending on the source) debts, as she demonstrates the ways Tamil women live out this ideal through their daily kolam ritual (rice flour designs created daily on thresholds) alongside other acts of generosity. Porterfield (2018) establishes that corporate and religious corporate entities have developed in lockstep with one another in the United States, while Vaca (2019) shows that commercial ideas and strategies from vertical and horizontal mergers to market segmentation actively shape Christianity today as Christian businesses employ these in order to promote their religion. In the Indian context, Srinivas (2018) points to the ways that information technology (IT) professionals struggling with the precariousness of new employment opportunities in Bangalore flock to temples where deities are dressed in garlands of cash. Brox and Williams-Oerberg (2016, p. 8) argue that the capitalist engagements of Buddhist practitioners must be seen as examples of the ‘relevance of Buddhism within a context of globalization, market economies and the corporatization of modern lives’. The articles in this special issue on religious institutions in particular remind us that we must pay attention to the ways that seemingly contradictory motivations coincide and sometimes even produce one another.
Outline of the Special Issue
This special issue of the journal consists of both empirical as well as conceptual scholarship from three continents—Europe, North America and Asia—both on the impact of business on benevolence and vice versa, viewed through the lens of business houses and religious institutions. Additionally, it has two book reviews; one on CSR in India and the other on The Mind of the Leader.
The first article is co-authored by Ostas and de los Reyes, two business professors who specialize in ethics and the law. They examine the philosophical precepts undergirding Corporate Social Initiatives (CSI). The authors argue that the corporate response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been driven by beneficence rather than the profit motive alone. As major corporations turn their production lines to manufacturing hand sanitizer and face masks, and make pledges to not fire any employees, they undertake strategies to help their employees and customers. Drawing on business ethicist Thomas Dunfee’s statement of minimum moral obligation (Dunfee 2006), the authors argue that such business decisions are in line with concepts of corporate citizenship and social contract theory that ethicists and philosophers have developed over centuries. CSI (and by extension, CSR) is framed here not as an illegitimate tax or theft from stockholders as Milton Friedman (1962, 1970) famously proposed, but drawing inspiration from Adam Smith (1981 [1759], 1982 [1776]), as that which is natural to the human condition. The authors argue that while Friedman’s ideas, and those of the Chicago School more broadly, are widely known, they in fact contradict most of every expert account of moral conduct. If ethicists, philosophers, theologians and even the original political economist Adam Smith himself have all widely agreed that the natural state of human relations includes a fellow feeling that induces prudence and self-restraint, why would it be any different among business executives?
The second article co-authored by Bustamante, Ehlscheidt, Pelzeter, Deckmann and Freudenberger studies the effect of values of responsible employers for young job seekers from a management perspective. Conducted among 577 German students in their last year of study, this empirical research confirms the assertion of the theory of person-organization fit that postulates that job seekers are attracted by organizations with similar characteristics and/or those that match their needs (Kristof, 1996; Meglino & Ravlin, 1998; Schneider et al., 1995). In Germany, which has a voluntary CSR mandate without guidelines, it is interesting to note that only the employee-related aspects of CSR (and not the traditional CSR) by companies are relatively more attractive to the prospective employees, which may be because of their ability to fulfil the direct needs of most job seekers.
On the other hand, the third article, again from a management perspective, co-authored by Venkatesh, Chaudhuri and Mathew looks into the Indian perspective with regards to the new-age businesses represented by the IT sector. India has mandated CSR (unlike Germany) for large, stable companies under the Companies Act, 2013. However, this CSR mandate does not include sole employee welfare as a means of CSR. CSR in India is guided by the Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013, which lays down areas that will contribute towards specific national developmental agenda (which incidentally also relates to the 17 macro United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals). What is noteworthy in the exploratory research of Venkatesh et al. among six mid-sized and large IT companies in India is that CSR has already been incorporated among their corporate policy although the nature of CSR activities may vary and that there is specific company support towards employee engagement in CSR. This employee involvement in long term CSR projects had positive outcomes in the corporate–employee relationships that included elevated happiness quotient of volunteering employees, especially the young millennial employees. In fact, they were also encouraged to come out with their own ISR interests that would be supported by the corporate employer. In other words, in this case CSR becomes a motivation as well as a means of nurturing ISR.
The above two articles corroborate to the fact that the concept and approach of CSR is different in developed and emerging economies. There are, of course, multiple reasons why this is so, the most important being the socio-cultural-economic differences among the two types of economies. In this case, the empirical research in Germany, one of the developed economies of the world, having voluntary CSR point to the motivation of the job seekers towards employee-related aspects of CSR or that which caters to the employees of the organizations; on the other hand, in India which has a mandated CSR, the motivation of the volunteering employees or young millennials lie in outreach based CSR.
The final two pieces turn to religious institutions, namely, Buddhist sites in India and China respectively. Anthropologist Williams-Oerberg’s article examines benevolence of a different sort—the philanthropic efforts of Buddhist monks in the Ladakh region of India made wealthy by the increasing commercialization of monasteries. While monasteries have always functioned as centres of economic activity where monks collect lay donations as a form of merit-making and offer ritual services in return, this has traditionally been a subsistence arrangement. Now that monasteries are major tourist sites with international support, they struggle with the question of what to do with all of their excess income. Monks now ‘flip’ the donor system around, becoming donors themselves through philanthropy to lay communities both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. They not only renovate monasteries and build new temples with their money but also build hospitals and schools and provide health services, education and relief aid to the needy, particularly in the Ladakh region but sometimes globally. Williams-Oerberg argues that these monks thereby resist the forces of secularization that have otherwise decreased their once-prestigious place in the social hierarchy. While lay people may not employ monks as ritual specialists in the way they used to, they respect and admire the humanism and social work of the monks and have come to see Buddhism as a practical religion. The monks’ benevolence in this case ensure that Buddhism’s importance in the region is not decreasing, but it is surely changing.
Finally, religious studies scholar Bruntz’s article turns to state-owned companies’ investment in religious sites in China. Under the auspices of raising tourist revenue, the atheist state’s financial involvement in Buddhist sites has the result of reviving religious practice. The state must play up the religious aspects of these sites (here specifically, the authenticity of Mount Putuo as the true home of the Bodhisattva Guanyin), and is quite literally invested in attracting people to them. By and large, monastic communities welcome these investments because the more people come to Buddhist sites—even if it is for a weekend getaway—the more they are exposed to Buddhism, and more the donations monks receive. Monks can then use these donations to build and renovate temples. Here again, traditional structures of state patronage and lay donations are transformed, and religious institutions are instrumental in benevolent activities, which in turn attracts more investments both financial (donations, funding, etc.) and non-financial (reputation, brand image, etc.). Investing in religious tourism cannot be merely a secular affair, and lay donations to those sites are not always for the sake of merit-making. What monastic communities do object to is the public trading of Buddhist sites. Two of China’s four Buddhist mountains are listed on the Shanghai stock exchange. For many Buddhists, including members of the Buddhist Association of China, this amounts to a wholesale corporatization of religion which they cannot accept. The line between religion (Buddhism) in this article and business is indeed blurry.
Conclusion
Thus, we find that although business houses and religious institutions are viewed as completely separate entities, when it comes to benevolence or ‘giving back,’ some of their dynamics in terms of motivation, impact and attractiveness have many things in common. In a corporation, the content and attractiveness of CSR policies differ depending on the age of employee, the type of business and the national context (which coincides with different laws). These, on the other hand, have a direct effect on the company’s stakeholders (employees, customers and suppliers to name a few). The corporation to a large extent gains its reputational value by the CSR it does.
In the same way, religious institutions’ (here Buddhist institutions) funding of certain social and religious projects—made possible through excess donations—boosts their reputation. It helps the religion ‘prosper’ in the form of reaching more people and gaining new devotees. While feeding and educating the poor may always have been universal values, our articles reveal that in the twenty-first century they are becoming even more important than others.
Together, these contributions shed light on the ethics and effects of acts of benevolence by two apparently distinct types of institutions—the profiteering corporation and the spiritual religious institution. While they answer many questions, they also invoke many more. It is our hope that this special issue initiates a new set of conversations where management scientists and humanities academics come together to enrich each other’s thought and work. After all, these disciplines are part of the same social structure.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflict of interests with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.