Ethical blog

Gift Giving in Business

On June 26, 2023 gave a presentation on Gift Giving in Business at the Management & Gift workshop of The Economy of Francesco program. He focused on two questions: (1) What should a leader be like and what decisions does the leader take to make a company generative? and (2) What is the spirituality that enables dialogue between poverty and management? Zsolnai’s presentation emphasized that a business leader should be genuinely altruistic, i.e. giving without… Read More »Gift Giving in Business

Why we need radically new business models?

The CONSCIOUS CONSULTING GROUP made a podcast and a related video with Laszlo Zsolnai on the need of radically new business models. I argued that the ethical foundation of modern-day business is flawed. To be fruitful for society business should follow other ethical principles than materialistic egoism. Business ethics as a discipline studies the preconditions and possibilities for a more ethical functioning of business. The major problems of the Anthropocene (climate change, biodiversity loss,… Read More »Why we need radically new business models?

Art and Ecological Regeneration

Laszlo Zsolnai gave a keynote lecture on ” Art and Ecological Regeneration” at the Photography MA graduation of MOME on May 16, 2023. He argued against the market metaphysics that dominates business and economics as well as almost all spheres of social life today. He suggested to follow the idea of “beautiful act” by Immanuel Kant which requires doing gentle, careful ways of living and acting. Acknowledging the intrinsic value of things and measuring success… Read More »Art and Ecological Regeneration

The Human Potential

Anikó Zsolnai and I published a book in Hungarian entitled “The Human Potential – Jozsef Zsolnai’s Pedagogy” (Az emberi potential. Zsolnai József pedagógiája. 2023. Savaria University Press.) The book documents the pedagogical concepcion of our father, Professor Jozsef Zsolnai (1935-2011) which aimed at the total development of values and capabilities of children and young adults. We summarized the Zsolnai’s pedagogy as follows. The basic postulate of the Zsolnai’s pedagogy: (1) The task of pedagogy is… Read More »The Human Potential

Galileo Commission Talk on Spirituality and Economics

On March 23, 2023 Laszlo Zsolnai delivered a lecture on Spirituality and Economics for the Galileo Commission (London). The main point of the lecture was that the extension and reorientation of economics toward a spiritually informed science is required to consider humans as having both material and non-material needs and desires, to recognize that they can be driven by intrinsic motivations, and to accept that economic actions should be evaluated multidimensionally with reference to the… Read More »Galileo Commission Talk on Spirituality and Economics

Business Ethics Center 2022

The 2022 Annual Report of the Business Ethics Center covers activities, projects, and publications including The Awakened Campus Global Initiative with Columbia University, The Economy of Francesco Program of Pope Francis, and the Sustainability Conference at the Indian Institute of Management – Shillong. The 2022 Annual Report of the Busiess Ethics Center can be downloaded here: BEC-Newsletter-2022

The Awakened Campus Global Initiative

Columbia University Spirituality, Mind, Body Institute, the European SPES Institute, Leuven, and the Business Ethics Center of Corvinus University of Budapest organize an international online conference on The Awakened Campus Global Initiative in November 29-30, 2022. The aim of the conference is to create a collaborative global network of higher education institutions to integrate spirituality in their activities. The overall goal is to help the formation of spiritual awareness of students, faculty and university leaders… Read More »The Awakened Campus Global Initiative

Spiritual Economic Models

Conducted by Istvan Kamaras, a sociologist of religion Gabor Kovacs and András Ocsai made a longer interview on spiritual economic models in Hungarian in the radio “Sola Rádió” on October 11, 2022. They discussed the working models and inspiration of economic and business models presented in the “Economy and Religion” book published by the Business Ethics Center of Corvinus University of Budapest. The conversation can be accessed here:

The Awakened Brain

Laszlo Zsolnai’s review on Lisa Miller’s book “The Aawkened Brain” has been published in Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion 19(5) October 2022. pp. 546-549. DOI: https://doi.org/10.51327/YYAK1825 Lisa Miller is a professor of psychology at Columbia University who has a joint appointment at Columbia Teachers College and Columbia Medical School. She is a well-known scholar in the field of spirituality and depression and serves as the founding director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at… Read More »The Awakened Brain

Earth is our only shareholder

Yvon Chouinard, a Buddhist entrepreneur and founder of Patagonia, an American retailer of outdoor clothing company, made an extraordinary proclamation. He said that “Earth is now our only shareholder”. This statement has wide-ranging implications not just for his company but also for business in general. Shareholders are those entities the benefit of whom a capitalist firm should be managed for and whom the company management is responsible to. If a company considers the Earth as… Read More »Earth is our only shareholder