Publications

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

Beyond Materialism & Reductionism

Laszlo Zsolnai gave a keynote presentation entitled “Beyond Materialism and Reductionism“ in The Awakened Campus Global Initiative Conference in November 29-30, 2022 at Columbia University. Zsolnai argued that today’s mainstream social practices and the professions are based on strong materialist and reductionist assumptions. He showed that spiritually informed social practices can lead to better and more satisfying results than materialist and reductionist models of current mainstream practices. Zsolnai called for whole person education, that is,… Read More »Beyond Materialism & Reductionism

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

Spirituality and Economics

My paper on “Spirituality and Economics” has been published in the Journal for the Study of Spirituality in the UK. https://doi.org/10.1080/20440243.2022.2126136 This paper argues that mainstream economics is a materialist and reductionist science. It criticizes the core assumptions of mainstream economics – namely, the existence of ‘Homo Oeconomicus’ and the goals of profit maximization, economic efficiency, and economic growth; and shows that these goals lead to an economy that is not only unhealthy for people… Read More »Spirituality and Economics

Happiness and Economics

An intensive course on Happiness and Economics will be organized by the Business Ethics Center at Corvinus University in September 5-9, 2022. (See attachments) Program Boldogság és gazdaság 2022 ősz A kurzus oktatói Projektmunka 1a Colin Ash Boldogság és közgazdaságtan 1b Toward-a-Sustainable-Wellbeing-Economy 2 Slow food 3 Which countries are best at converting economic growth into well-being_ _ World Economic Forum 4 Knut Ims From Welfare to Wellbeing and Happiness 5 A közösségi gazdaság 6 Can… Read More »Happiness and Economics

Economy and Religion

The book on “Economy & Religion: Innovative Models of Economic Spirituality” has been published in Hungarian by Corvinus University of Budapest in July 2022. The book is edited by Laszlo Zsolnai, Gabor Kovacs, and Andras Ocsai. The project was financed by National Research, Development and Innovation Fund (NKFI) Mecenatura 2021 Program (MEC_K 140856 Grant). This open access book can be downloaded from: http://unipub.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/7537/# The book offers a comprehensive picture about the main economic conceptions… Read More »Economy and Religion

Ecologies of Transdisciplinary Research

Paul Shrivastava, Laszlo Zsolnai, David Wasieleski, and Philippe Mairesse: “Ecologies of Transdisciplinary Research” Ground Works 2022 August https://groundworks.io/journal/commentaries/9 In this paper the authors consider transdisciplinarity to be qualitatively different from interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity in several crucial ways. Transdisciplinary work takes its problems from the real world and not disciplinary gaps in knowledge or combining disciplines for innovative new understandings. Transdisciplinarity involves co-creation of integrated knowledge across disciplines with stakeholders to solve problems on the ground.… Read More »Ecologies of Transdisciplinary Research