Business and Religion: Comparing Strategies and Values That Both Entities Share (Palgrave Studies in Workplace Spirituality and Fulfillment)

This book explores the connections between Christian religions and businesses. It examines how companies adopt tools traditionally used by churches to manage culture, strategy, and values while also exploring how churches leverage business strategies to achieve similar objectives.

The author analyzes the mechanisms of influence both institutions use to internalize the "soul" of their organizations, including marketing systems, supported by real-world case studies. Later, he shows how companies like Coca-Cola behave like secular religions. He then compares how religious organizations—such as the Catholic Church, the Willow Creek Community Church, and the Jesuit Order—employ influence and business strategies similar to those of corporations like McDonald's, Mary Kay, and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. By examining these parallels, this work reveals that business corporations and churches operate in fundamentally similar ways.

Lastly, this volume estimates the monetary dimensions of what the author refers to as the “salvation market.” As society has become more demanding of corporate behavior, companies have responded by developing new areas—such as human resources to improve employee conditions, marketing to attract customers and talent, and the concept of stakeholders, which gave rise to a focus on ethical considerations, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) as well as diversity and inclusion initiatives. The culmination of this process today is a strong emphasis on sustainability, showing how these new ethical values have gained prominence.

Exploring organizational dynamics through a sociological lens, this book will appeal to researchers interested in organizational behavior, strategy, and marketing who seek to learn about the cultural dynamics of business and religious organizations.

Eugenio Andrés Marchiori is Professor in Change Management at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.