Center for Spiritual Capital
The Center for Spiritual Capital at Loyola University New Orleans is a new research, education, and outreach organization that works with scholars, policy experts, and business leaders to connect academic learning and real-world practice. The mission of the center is to promote sound interdisciplinary research to produce innovative ideas that advance in a sustainable way a free, prosperous, and responsible civil society.
The center seeks to establish a home for, and a new network of, business leaders, academic leaders, religious leaders, and community and political leaders in general, to focus on the search for new ethical norms to guide the evolving economic relationships of the post-modem era. Special efforts will be made to bring a variety of religious traditions to bear on the traditional functions and roles of today's corporations.
The Need for Spiritual Capital Revitalization
American culture is confronting a new chapter in its struggle since the late 1960s to come to grips with an effective business ethics for a pluralistic society. The scandals of Enron and WorldCom constitute egregious examples of the absence or deficiency of ethical decision-making in matters of commerce.
This corporate immorality is a reminder of the ineffectiveness of an ethics grounded alone in utilitarian rationalism, and its ineffectiveness in dealing with the newly forming social relationships of a post-modem global economy. Re-grounding will require a more sophisticated relationship with the spiritual roots of business ethics. Loyola has a unique plan and resources for furthering the development of this relationship, both theoretically and practically.
Loyola's Spiritual Approach
Loyola's goal for the center is to revitalize America's spiritual capital. Judeo-Christian heritage is the core of America's spiritual capital. As the defining element in American culture it has made possible our economic and political achievements and freedoms; these achievements cannot be sustained without that heritage; the heritage has important positive implications for commerce both nationally and globally; the heritage is often misunderstood and misrepresented, and, for all of the above reasons, the heritage needs to be reaffirmed.
Loyola's College of Business is well positioned to take the lead locally, regionally, and nationally in fostering the importance of spirituality in modern workplaces. Today, organizations need ethical decision-makers to support a productive culture of trust and moral decision-making. This culture, combined with the innovative drive of entrepreneurial thinking, will create a sustainable differential advantage for leaders that choose to follow the path of creating spiritual capital.
The new Center for Spiritual Capital will work achieve this goal both academically and culturally. The center will be a comprehensive resource center for those interested in exploring or dealing with specific issues in business. We strive to attract and foster a new generation of students who will exercise a more profound role as entrepreneurs in business and leaders in both commerce and culture. Our outreach programs with executives will reaffirm, reeducate, and inspire them to make even greater contribution.
Center for Spiritual Capital Resources
- Lecture Series
- Executive Seminars and Conferences
- Graduate Certificate Program for Business Executives
- Business Leaders Panel Forums
- Annual Retreats
- Partnership Retreats
- Business Integrity Awards
Corporate Partnership Opportunities
Corporations and other organizations are encouraged to join as partners with the Center for Spiritual Capital to primarily further their own strategic knowledge of business ethics issues and organizational methods.
Corporate and other organizational participants contribute $10,000 per year to the partnership, pledging their participation for a three-year term. Corporate participants will be asked to pay their travel and direct housing costs of attendance at the annual retreat and the travel expenses of faculty/staff who visit the company to present the annual update.
Partnership Benefits
Annual Partnership Retreats
Once yearly, members of the partnership will meet over two days to review emerging business and organizational issues, to examine management issues which have arisen in the member companies, to review studies and research done by the faculty participants, to identify issues for research and study by the faculty participants, and to review the results of studies done elsewhere on business and organizational issues.
Research, Studies and Publications
The partnership will make grants for research and studies addressing critical questions suggested by the participants. Approved partnership studies will be disseminated widely in the name of the companies and other participants in the partnership.
Information and Reports
Partners will receive regular practical reports on business and organizational ethics in the workplace, cutting-edge emerging issues, strategies, and solutions. Faculty participants in the partnership will be available to make presentations on their research or on broader business ethics issues at participating corporations.
Annual Ethics Update
The partnership will issue an annual update on developments in business and organizational issues in the workplace which will be available for presentation to each partner organization.
