The Employee as a Human Resource

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors offer advice to business faculty at Catholic colleges and universities about how a robust and realistic conception of the human person can inform their teaching. This research can support faculty of mission-driven schools of business as they seek to operationalize the implications of the religious affiliation of their institutions. The authors begin by sketching the evolution of management theory over the last century and how theory has changed to represent a fuller and more accurate account of the nature of persons in organizations. They show how the consistent prescriptions of more than a century of Catholic social thought (CST) parallel those now offered by management scholarship. The authors note, however, that though the content of the advice coming from these respective traditions of thought has converged, the grounds of that advice continue to differ in important ways. They conclude by recommending that business faculty embrace and adopt the conception of the person now largely shared between CST and contemporary management theory.