For Humanist Management and Against Economics

The paper critically inquires as to whether, and if so how, the economic approach, and particularly an economic approach to business ethics, connects to humanistic management. I contend that economics as it is conventionally understood is difficult to reconcile with humanistic traditions that mirror personalist, behavioral ethical doctrines. If exclusively approached from a personalist, behavioral position, an economic approach to ethics has to be understood as ‘de-humanising.’ Nevertheless, the paper aligns a nonpersonalist concept of humanism to an economic approach to business ethics. Various conceptual dimensions of such a humanistic interpretation of economics are uncovered. A key insight is that economics reflects a systemic ethics, which inquires about the good society in a non-behavioral, macro-perspective. The paper sets out how personalist and nonpersonalist approaches to humanism can be reconciled, either from within the market economy, or by exiting from the market economy. The former route implies that humanistic management in a personalist tradition has to lean on economics in order to succeed; the latter route would see itself in opposition to an economics which conceptually informs the market economy.