Business and Benevolence: A Cross-disciplinary Intervention

This special issue is a bold attempt at cross-disciplinary collaboration. Business management and humanities faculty from three continents working on German, American, Chinese and Indian contexts contribute scholarship on the intertwining of business and benevolence. With attention to this journal’s recent shift in focus to uncovering ‘values’, not only the religious or spiritual but also the secular, this special issue examines benevolence through a study of both corporate and religious institutions, and from the perspectives of individuals, corporations and states. Specifically, we consider employer– employee and corporate–society relations in corporations that engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR), as well as the interplay of ethics and economics inherent in the ways that religious leaders allocate donations made explicitly to Buddhist institutions. In other words, through this special issue, an attempt is made to understand the various facets of institutional benevolence—be it corporations or religious institutions —and to identify the role of ‘business’ in such cohorts. Our study shows that CSR is often understood as a moral imperative—including and especially in a time of a global pandemic like COVID-19—and that a corporation’s commitment to CSR is becoming increasingly attractive to individual employees. Many young employees in particular make career decisions based on the extent to which employers will allow their individual social responsibility (ISR) to be supported by CSR policies. Benevolence is a value that is attractive to corporations and corporate leaders for reasons beyond profit, and yet it may be profitable as well. The contributions to Buddhism demonstrate that it is just as difficult to disentangle benevolence and profit when it comes to religious corporations in the form of Buddhist sites. Religious tourism in both India and China has the effect of spreading and popularizing Buddhism, albeit in altered forms. As Buddhist temples and monasteries attract more and more visitors (be they tourists or devotees), donations are put to use in social engagement projects including educating the poor and protecting the environment, rather than focusing merely on maintaining traditional ritual practices. In each of these cases, acts of benevolence take on new meaning in the twenty-first century as corporations are held to greater account for their actions in a global economic context of widening inequality, and as religious sites along with so many other aspects of human life become increasingly commodified. The consequences of those acts are sometimes unintended, and reflect as well as produce new dynamics between individuals, institutions and societies. Journal of Human Values 27(1) 7–14, 2021 © 2020 Management Centre for Human Values Reprints and permissions: in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india DOI: 10.1177/0971685820970067 journals.sagepub.com/home/jhv