Business ethics and spirituality for corporate sustainability: a Buddhism perspective

ABSTRACT

Globally, ethical concerns principally focus on the need for business ethics as well as an emphasis on spiritual leadership to enhance long-term effectiveness and corporate sustainability. This paper responds to a call for further studies of business ethics and spirituality in workplaces and advances the currently limited knowledge in the realm, in particular, from an Eastern Buddhism perspective. Using a case study research approach, this paper investigates how a modern company can ethically and spiritually lead and manage a successful, sustainable business. A Buddhist-based philosophy of “Sufficiency Economy,” as advocated by United Nations Development Programme was used as the research framework to examine the philosophy’s ethical and spiritual application. The findings suggest that, to achieve long-term corporate sustainability, a successful business enterprise should embrace good ethical and spiritual values via ethics/morality, knowledge, moderation, reasonableness, resilience, compassion and care for its stakeholders. Implications, limitations and future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• spirituality
• Buddhism
• Sufficiency Economy
• leadership
• corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suparak Suriyankietkaew

Suparak Suriyankietkaew, PhDs, is currently a full-time lecturer and Chairs of Business Management Program and Human Capital and Organization Development Program at College of Management, Mahidol University, in Thailand. She attained a double doctorate in Management at Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Australia, and Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research interests focus on leadership, sustainable/responsible/ethical leadership, corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability, Buddhist-based management and economics, and high-performance organizations. She can be reached at [email protected].

Pornkasem Kantamara

Pornkasem Kantamara, EdD, is currently a full-time lecturer at Mahidol University in Thailand. She earned her doctorate in General Administrative Leadership from Vanderbilt University, USA. Her research areas include leadership, change management, soft skills and people management. She can be reached at [email protected].