Introduction to Humanistic Management in Practice

This book aims to unearth accounts of businesses that excel at doing well and doing good. They make products and services that address genuine human needs and they do so in ways that equally respect all stakeholder concerns. This book also follows the Humanistic Management Network’s previous book, Humanism in Business, in which we laid the theoretical foundations for a more life-conducive role of business in society. The Humanistic Management Network has selected 19 case examples of companies from around the globe, in a variety of industries, and with different ownership structures and sizes. These cases explore the principles of humanistic management and examine its theoretical merits by assessing its practical feasibility. They show how businesses can unite social value generation with financial success. One general prerequisite for managing a business along humanistic principles is the emancipation from a singular focus on maximizing profits. What these companies share is that they are managed as an integrated and responsive part of society by: • Seeing that their organizational raison d’être includes the promotion of social benefit, for which business methods and market mechanisms are a means to support a specific end, rather than an end in itself. • Submitting to the necessity of earning at least a sufficient income to be a self-sustaining organization but without succumbing to profit maximization as a normative criterion. • Maintaining the liberty to opt out of the application of market rationality where this would conflict with or decrease the social benefits the organization seeks to create