Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

Summer 2003

Conference Title

2003 Summer Seminar: Managing As If Faith Matters

City

South Orange, NJ

Abstract

As part of the Lilly Endowment "Theological Exploration In Vocation" grant awarded to Seton Hall University, the Center for Catholic Studies sponsored a four-day seminar open to administration, faculty and staff to discern and situate their managerial role as a unique and transformative vocation.

Managing in a university setting poses critical personal questions: As a manager, what kind of person should I strive to become? What kind of organization should I, as a manager or employee, strive to build and maintain? Has my managerial education and formation contributed to a moral outlook that privatizes my faith and insulates my managerial judgments from questions of common and ultimate purpose? Are faith traditions relevant in managing as well as forming others to become managers? Do they offer positive resources in developing an adequate understanding of our roles as managers and educators of managers? Specifically, does the Catholic social tradition offer compelling moral criteria to assess marketing plans that show little consideration for wider effects, job designs that dehumanize workers, ownership structures that reserve wealth to the few, compensation policies that pay below family wages, work hours and travel policies that keep managers away from home, and downsizing policies that fail to address issues of justice as well as efficiency?

Participants in the seminar read excerpts from Alford and Naughton's book, Managing As If Faith Mattered (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).

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