Recent posts

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

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 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

Wellbeing Oriented Organizations

I published a major paper on Wellbeing Oriented Organizations with Paul Shrivastava (Penn State University). We argue for connecting human flourishing with ecological regeneration and provide real world examples of innovative business and social organizations doing this. The paper is available online as open access publication at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/beer.12421

Art and Aesthetics in Sustainability Education

Sybille Persson, Paul Shrivastava and Laszlo Zsolnai: “Art and Aesthetics in Sustainability Education. Insights into Beautifying Management Education with François Jullien” RIPCO (Revue Internationale de Psychosociologie et de Gestion des Comportements Organisationnels) Vol XXVII, Issue 71, 2021 pp. 75-98. The paper questions the conceptual basis of art and aesthetics used in management education in order to foster sustainability education. Our specific approach is to open a dialogue with the Chinese conception of aesthetics, particularly focusing… Read More »Art and Aesthetics in Sustainability Education

Ethics and Spirituality

Laszlo Zsolnai: “Ethics and Spirituality” in Yochanan Altman, Judi Neal and Wolfgang Mayrhofer (Eds.): Workplace Spirituality. Making a Difference. 2022. De Gruyter. pp. 75-83. The paper discusses the relationship between ethics and spirituality in business and management context. It shows that business ethics lacks a deeper existential-spiritual foundation which causes inadequate and ineffective functioning of ethics in business and management. The paper argues for spiritual-based business ethics and presents some research tracks, namely Integral Ecology,… Read More »Ethics and Spirituality

Annual Report 2021

The Annual Report 2021 summarizes the main projects and activities of the Busness Ethics Center of Corvinus University of Budapest. BEC-Newsletter-2021-

Lecturing On Frugal Consumption in Los Angeles

On November 19, 2021, Laszlo Zsolnai gave a lecture on “Spiritual Humanism – The Case for Frugal Consumption” in the “Corporate Social Responsibility and Good Governance” course of the Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, Los Angeles. In his lecture Zsolnai discussed the problems of the dominating overconsumption patterns of Western societies, namely welfare malaises, global inequality, and ecological overshot. He argued for frugal consumption that can be characterized as (i) mindful (as it serves… Read More »Lecturing On Frugal Consumption in Los Angeles

In Memoriam Janos Kornai

Janos Kornai, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Corvinus University of Budapest died on October 18, 2021. He was one of the most influential economists of his generation. He developed an anti-Walrasian economic framework within which both capitalist and socialist systems can be described and analyzed. I had the privilege of knowing Janos Kornai for 40 years. I collaborated with him on several occasions. My first academic publication was a methodological analysis of his… Read More »In Memoriam Janos Kornai