Ideologically Oriented Enterprises Faced with the Reconfiguration of Ethics and Spiritual Management

Abstract

The spread of market rationality leads to new fertilizations between economic markets and spiritual markets. US and European evolutions (through their legal systems but also through their managerial practices) seem profoundly different. It is not simply a matter of recalling the rapid emergence in Europe of Islamic modes of finance, trade, or industry. It is rather a question of paying attention to the deeper renewal of a pluralism of economic legitimacies linked to reference points such as business “ethics,” “culture,” and “participative management.” What difference, then, should we see between the appearance of the fast-food restaurant, Quick’s, that prepares meat in accordance with Islamic law and the secular business culture of Coca-Cola? Or, between the networks of Belgian Club bookshops or the Oxfam and Max Havelaar fair-trade chains, and even the long-standing development of ethnic shops, from the Chinese or kosher restaurant to Pakistani grocery stores and women-only fitness centers? What is the legal future of an apparently growing new kind of spiritually managed firms?

Keywords: Religious enterprises, spiritual management, European comparative law, Neutrality, Diversity, Secularism