Celeste Harvey

In our world today, luxury lifestyles are aspirational. However, there is also a case to be made that luxury is vicious and alienates us from important sources of fulfillment, both personal and social. Building on the arguments of the moral theologian David Cloutier, this essay argues that the aspiration to luxury degrades work and the values associated with good work. Attachment to luxury can alienate us from important sources of personal fulfillment in meaningful work and from inter-generational relationships of reciprocity and gratuity based in gratitude and appreciation for good work. The demise of the craft of historic wood window preservation illustrates these dynamics. Additionally, I argue that luxury fosters destructive social competition leading to social alienation, and it alienates us from the common good by making it harder to achieve. Addressing the vice of luxury requires the virtue of economic temperance and its various expressions in simplicity, frugality, contentment, and humility.

In this essay we will demonstrate that the Economy of Communion (EoC) movement provides a very good example of Humanistic Management (HM) as characterized by Domènec Melé in particular. EoC provides a unique lens through which to conceive of Humanistic Management which is extraordinarily person-centered, and which maps onto many of the key themes and principles of Humanistic Management practice. We will here present nine features of Humanistic Management which are clearly displayed in EoC scholarship and practice. We will show the commonalities of thought between EoC and HM through their parallel scholarly explanations of business practices, and also through concrete lived examples of EOC entrepreneurs. Our hope is that the Economy of Communion movement and businesses will become a fruitful source of study and investigation for further Humanistic Management research.

In this essay, we highlight 7 distinctives of EoC businesses which set them apart even from other humanistic approaches to management. Not that EoC’s distinctives make them a non-humanistic form of management, but they distinguish it with a unique set of goals and aims. These are: 1. Social and Economic Transformation Towards Unity; 2. The existential Self giving aspect—Creating a Culture of Encounter; 3. Redistributing Wealth for the Common Good; 4. Concern to Alleviate Poverty in All of Its Forms, and to Participate in Poverty; 5. EoC Entrepreneurs Participate in Poverty (The Wound and the Blessing); 6. Fraternity and the Market as a Place of Community-Building (Communion); and 7. Competitors as friends—Acting as “Starters of Cooperation.”