Religion and Leadership

Religion plays a decisive role in the actions and motivations of many leaders, yet it remains an understudied topic in business and leadership. Together, we shall go on an existential journey to discover religion’s role in leadership and the good life. Furthermore, this course deploys a virtue framework to examine how drawing on the ethics of Eastern & Western religious traditions promotes business values and themes that many find essential to human flourishing and the common good. Values and themes explored in this course include servant leadership, empathy, care for the whole employee, integrity, trustworthiness, mitigating bribery, viewing work as a calling, etc.

In these respects, our journey concerns work and its role in both leading others well and promoting a quest for the flourishing human life. Toward these ends, we shall ask questions such as: What do various religious traditions say about leadership and the life worth living? To what degree do religious traditions provide leaders with the courage to endure suffering and other workplace harms? How are leaders shaped by their moral imagination and the religious stories that penetrate them? Etc.

Through genuine participation in this course, students should be able to exercise and hopefully even enhance particular virtues and skills, such as practical wisdom, the evaluation of controversial arguments, and the ability to engage in contemplation (theoria) about ethical leadership, which will hopefully translate to embodied practice (praxis) by the end of the semester. Toward these ends, students need to demonstrate an understanding of the roles that religion and spirituality play in the formation of their values and the values of others. Furthermore, they should be willing to discuss their values with a diverse group of peers who may not share them.