About the Authors

V. Adinarayanan is Founder of the Anaadi Foundation, a public charitable trust aimed at empowering young people to lead a socially conscious and sustainable life. He was formerly an Assistant Professor, Department of Information Technology, and Coordinator of the Department of Cultural Education at Amrita University in Coimbatore, India. Adinarayanan has an MS in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University. Before joining Amrita University in 2005, he was a software engineer. Through Anaadi Foundation he is currently offering programs on the themes of Education, Culture, Well-being and Sustainability, combining insights from Yogic sciences, Mahabharata and Cognitive Sciences.

Anna Bajo Sanjuán is Researcher at the Chair of Economic and Business Ethics, Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid, Spain. Her research interests include business ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. She is also interested in the promotion of social responsibility in academic institutions and in digital ethics.

Bernd Beermann entered the order of the Capuchin-Franciscans in 1990. He studied Chemistry and Biology at the University of Münster, Germany. He completed his PhD in Bio-Physical Chemistry with Prof. Dr. H.-J. Hinz in 2003. He went to Franciscans International in Geneva working as advocacy officer in the field of ecology at the UN until 2009. Then he was made Head of the Office for Justice, Peace and Care for Creation at the General Curia of the Capuchin Order in Rome. In 2012, he returned to Germany to take over the position of Master of the Post-Novices of the German Capuchin Province.

Luk Bouckaert is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He is a Philosopher and an Economist by training. His research and publications fall within the fields of business ethics and spirituality. In 1987, he founded the Centre for Economics and Ethics at the Catholic University of Leuven. In 2000, he started the SPES Forum (Spirituality in Economics and Society) and in 2004 the international European SPES Forum which he chaired as president until 2014. He wrote several books in Dutch. His recent publications in English include: ‘Spirituality as a Public Good’ (co-edited with L. Zsolnai, 2007), ‘Frugality. Rebalancing Material and Spiritual Values in Economic Life’ (co-edited with H.Opdebeeck and L.Zsolnai, 2008), ‘Imagine Europe’ (co-edited with J. Eynikel, 2009), ‘Respect and Economic Democracy’ (co-edited with Pasquale Arena, 2010) and The Palgrave Handbook of Spirituality and Business (co-edited with L. Zsolnai, 2011).

Manas Chatterji is Professor of Management and Adjunct Professor in Economics and the Asian and Asian-American Studies Program at Binghamton University, State University of New York and Guest Professor, Peking University, Visiting Professor, Central University of Finance and Economics, Distinguished Professor in Poznan University, Poland. He was also an Honorary Distinguished Professor at Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, India and George Mason University, U.S. He is an elected member of Polish Academy of Science – Committee on Regional Planning. Professor Chatterji is currently a fellow of the international organization Economists for Peace and Security. He previously taught at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and has held visiting appointments at Cornell University, Erasmus University, University of Karlsruhe, University of Munster and many other universities in the United States, Europe, Asia and South Africa.

He has organized international meetings on Peace Science, Disaster Management, Health Care, Technology Management, etc. in many countries including Japan, China and Russia. During his career, he has edited three journals and serves on editorial boards of many others. Presently, he is the coeditor of International Journal of Peace Economics and Peace Science. He is the General Editor of a book series on Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development published by Emerald Publishing Company, UK. Twenty-seven volumes in this series have been published. He has authored/edited more than thirty books and published about 80 scholarly articles in the areas of Peace Science, Military Spending, Disarmament, Economic Conversion, Conflict Management, Regional Science, Technology Management, Health Care Management, Energy, Environmental and Urban Management.

Jean-Paul Close has a university degree in Mathematics, Computer Science and International Business. During the first part of his life, he was a global executive in large multinationals. In 2003, he suffered family crises upon returning to the Netherlands and had an awareness breakthrough of his own. He decided to study the evolution of society and human complexities. In 2009, he started the Foundation for Transformation, Indexation and Research (STIR) and to set up core value driven collaborations such as AiREAS, FRE2SH and STIR learning cooperations. He coined the term ‘Sustainocracy’ which is a democracy based on core human values involving all regional stakeholders at once. In 2015, external scientific research placed his initiatives at the highest level of evolutionary regional development. Since then the Sustainocratic ideology and methods are finding their way into many communities in Europe and the rest of the world.

Daniel Deak is Professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest where he serves as the head of the Department of Business Law.  He teaches and does research in comparative and international business law and taxation.  From time to time, he is also invited by multinationals to advise them on legal and tax planning, and by European public agencies to offer an expert opinion on legal harmonisation.  He is also active in the international Pax Romana movement of Catholic intellectuals.

Mara Del Baldo is Associate Professor in Small Business Management, Financial Accounting and Economics of Sustainability at ‘Carlo Bo’ University of Urbino, Italy. Her research interests include entrepreneurship and Accountability, CSR, sustainability and business ethics, SMEs and networking strategies, accounting and gender, financial and integrated reporting and social and environmental accounting (SEAR). She is a member of the European Council for Small Business, the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR), the European SPES Institute, the Global Corporate Governance Institute (GCI) and the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN).

She is editorial board member and reviewer of several scientific journals and she authored numerous publications, including articles in Italian and foreign journals, chapters books, monographs and conference proceedings.

Thomas Dienberg is Professor of Theology of Spirituality at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule (PTH) Münster and a member of the Capuchin order. He was President of the PTH from 2002 to 2014 and is now the Director of the Competence Center for Christian Spirituality in Münster. He has a Doctorate in Theology of Spirituality (studied in Münster, Nijmegen, Wien and St. Bonaventure University in New York) and is a Master of Organizational Management (Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum). His main interests include asceticism, mysticism, Franciscan spirituality, spirituality and literature, secularization and spirituality, spirituality and management/leadership.

José Luis Fernández Fernández is Professor and Director of the Chair in Economic and Business Ethics at Pontifical University Comillas, Madrid, Spain. He served as President of EBEN-Spain from 1993 to 2007. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the European Ethics Network and a Fellow of the Caux Round Table. He is a representative at CTN 165 Ética, UNE-ISO 26000 at AENOR – Agencia Española de Normalización y Certificación. From 2000 to 2003, he served as Vice Rector for External Relations and University Extension for the Pontifical University Comillas.

Manuel Fernández-Lopez is Associate Professor at the Nord University, Bodø, Norway. He has worked internationally both in multinational business and academic institutions and has focused on the area of long-term thinking for sustainable models of living. He has worked on projects in Norway, Spain, Ireland, UK, Seychelles, Cuba, Mexico and USA. His work has been rooted in the definition of sustainable development scenarios for well-being for the year 2030 and the study of the integration of these perspectives in higher education and business organizations. His work also aims at integrating emergent social and economic models including a philosophical and psychosocial foundation in the context of well-being and equality.

Rita Ghesquiere is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She holds a degree in Philology and wrote her PhD on Phenomenology and Literary Theory. Her research and publications fall within the scope of the history of European literature, juvenile fiction and spirituality. She published a Dutch literary companion to the history of European Literature: ‘Literaire Verbeelding. Een geschiedenis van de Europese literatuur tot 1750 and Literaire Verbeelding. Een geschiedenis van de Europese literatuur en cultuur vanaf 1750’ (Leuven, 2006 and 2008). Her ‘Jeugdliteratuur in perspectief’ (2009) is a well-known manual on children’s literature. Together with Knut Ims, she edited ‘Heroes and Anti-heroes. European Literature and the Ethics of Leadership’ (2010).

Nel Hofstra teaches Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Innovation at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She was one of the first authors in 1991 to do comparative research on Californian and Dutch companies’ attitudes to the management of environmental issues. Her latest publication, with Donald Huisingh, is ‘Eco-Innovations Characterized: A Taxonomic Classification of Relationships between Humans and Nature’ (Journal of Cleaner Production (66) 2014) which raises serious concerns about mainstream anthropocentric methods and appeals for a dialogical and regenerative approach to nature in which nature is recognized as a living entity.

Knut J. Ims is Professor in Business Ethics at the Department of Strategy and Management in the Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway. He has a PhD from the School of Economics and Legal Science, Gothenburg University, Sweden. With Lars Jacob Pedersen he has edited ‘Business and the Greater Good. Rethinking Business Ethics in an Age of Crisis’ (Edward Elgar, 2015). With Ove Jakobsen and Laszlo Zsolnai he has published ‘Product as Process – Commodities in Mechanic and Organic Ontology’ (Ecological Economics, 2015) and ‘Deep Ecology and Personal Responsibility’ (The Spiritual Dimension of Business Ethics and Sustainability. Springer, 2015).

Ove Jakobsen is Professor of Ecological Economics at the Bodø Graduate School of Business, University of Nordland, Norway. He is a Director and Co-founder of the Centre for Ecological Economics and Ethics at Bodø Graduate School of Business. He holds a Dr. Oecon degree from the Norwegian School of Economics. He also holds master’s degree in Marketing (SLHK, Oslo), Business Administration (NHH) and Philosophy (University of Bergen). His books include in English ‘Circulation Economics: Theory and Practice’ (2007, Oxford, Peter Lang)

Hendrik Opdebeeck teaches Philosophy and Ethics in the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Applied Economics and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He studied Philosophy and Economics at the universities of Ghent and Leuven. He is Chairman of the Flemish SPES-Forum and a member of the Board of the Europe SPES Institute. His recent publications include ‘The Point of Philosophy, An introduction for the Human Sciences’ (Peter Lang, 2015), ‘The Wisdom of Mercy as the Foundation of Business and Peace: The Alternative to Fear’ (in L. Bouckaert and M. Chatterji, Business, Ethics and Peace, Emerald, 2015) and ‘Responsibility in a Globalised Environment’ (Journal of Global Responsibility, 2012, (3):1).

V. Smrithi Rekha is research faculty member at the Center for Research in Advanced Technologies for Education (CREATE Labs), Amrita University, India. She has an MS in Information Systems from State University of New York, Buffalo, USA. She was at the University of L’Aquila, Italy, as Visiting Faculty in 2015. At CREATE Labs, she is working on Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning to enhance the teaching-learning process. She is an active member of the Women in Computing Group at Amrita.

José Luis Retolaza Ávalos Avalos is a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Center for Sustainable Business, Deusto Business School, Bilbao, Spain. His research fields include business ethics, entrepreneurial economics and financial economics.

Octavi Piulats Riu is a Professor of Philosophy, Culture and Anthropology at the University of Barcelona. He is a Guest Lecturer at the J.W.Goethe Universität in Frankfurt and Founder and Coordinator of the courses for ‘Ecological Thinking’ at the University of Barcelona. He has specialized in Romanticism, Ecology and Spiritual Science. His latest books are ‘Ecofilosofía’ (Ed. Abadia. Barcelona, 2014) and ‘Goethe y Montserrat’ (Ed. Pau de Damasc. Barcelona 2016).

Markus Warode is Dipl. Social Scientist, Dipl. Work Scientist and Business Coach. He serves as Head of Department for Management, Leadership and Spirituality of the IUNCTUS – Competence Centre of Christian Spirituality at the Philosophical-Theological University in Münster, Germany. He is a coach and consultant for value-based human resource management. His research interests include Franciscan spirituality and leadership, integrated human resource and organizational development and self-management.

Doirean Wilson is Diversity Lead & HRM Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University Business School London, UK. She is a member of the Management Leadership & Organizations academic department and Chair of the University’s Race Religion and Beliefs Forum. She holds a Doctorate in Professional Practice, a Master’s degree in Human Resource Management, a Postgraduate Certificate in Further Education, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Management Studies. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Personnel Development, and a Fellow of the European SPES Institute.

Laszlo Zsolnai is Professor and Director of the Business Ethics Center at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. He is President of the European SPES Institute in Leuven, Belgium. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in London, UK. He serves as editor of the ‘Frontier of Business Ethics’ book series at Peter Lang Publishers in Oxford. Laszlo Zsolnai’s books include ‘Europe-Asia Dialogue on Business Spirituality’ (2008, Antwerp and Apeldoorn), ‘Responsible Decision Making’ (2008, New Brunswick and London), ‘The Future International Manager: A Vision of the Roles and Duties of Management’ (2009, Palgrave Macmillan), ‘The Collaborative Enterprise: Creating Values for a Sustainable World’ (2010, Peter Lang Oxford) and ‘The Palgrave Handbook of Spirituality and Business’ (2011, Palgrave-Macmillan). His website is at: http://laszlo-zsolnai.net