The concepts of love and business do not seem to match very well, despite attempts to operationalize love as agape or neighborly love. In line with the emerging literature, this contribution uses a ...profane and analytical approach to agape as an ‘Agenda for Growth and Affirmation of People and the Environment’. Within this agenda we define agape as ‘the commitment to the well-being and flourishing of others’ and operationalized it to measure the concept in a substantial sample of 420 medium-sized and large companies in The Netherlands. At the core of the research lies the question whether and to what extent companies, represented by senior managers and members of the works council, are committed to the well-being of their employees. This article analyses the concept of agape and its application in a business context and presents the results of a survey. The results show that, on average, respondents report that their organization is committed to employees’ well-being in line with the organization’s values. Though not the aim of agape, since organizations that apply the concept reap tangible business benefits from it, the concept becomes suitable to a wider range of businesses.
Love Is Good, but Does It Have Teeth? Johnson, D. Brendan
The Hastings Center report,
July‐August 2023, 2023-Jul, 2023-07-00, 20230701, Letnik:
53, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This letter responds to the article “Love Your Patient as Yourself: On Reviving the Broken Heart of American Medical Ethics,” by Tyler Tate and Joseph Clair, in the March‐April 2023 issue of the ...Hastings Center Report.
In this opening lecture for the 2022 Budapest Conference on “Building Community in Fractured Societies: Challenges for Christians in Higher Education,” an overview is given of recent societal ...developments, (geo-) political, economic, ecological, sociological, psychological, and spiritual. A basic framework is presented on how to analyze today's, late-modern world. It is a world in which instrumental rationality is highly dominant. Next to this, powerful societal complexes exert deep influence on the lives of humans: political, economic, media, and medical. Over against this is posed the “real human world” of meaning and responsibility, as the key focus of Christian higher education.
Against the backdrop of the challenges posed by xenophobia and other social phenomena that operated with harmful strategies of “othering,” this article considers the promise that the notion of ...“mutual recognition” as exemplified in the later work of Paul Ricœur holds for discourse on these matters. Can the hermeneutical and mediating approach of Ricœur provide an adequate framework in order to respond to these radical challenges? In light of this question, this article discusses and ultimately affirms Ricœur’s view that places mutual recognition between what he calls the prose of justice and the poetics of agápē. In addition this article draws attention to the value of symbolic gestures and an ethic of linguistic hospitality to give further texture to the plea for mutual recognition amidst experience of exclusion, conflict and violence.
ABSTRACT
Recent readings of Kierkegaard's Works of Love have admirably shown how his apparent reservations about romantic love can be deflected on his own terms by imbuing them with some of the moral ...rigor of neighbor‐love. This paper argues however that these readings must be complemented by the reverse argument, which would show how some of the qualities of romantic loves are in fact preserved in neighbor‐love. By drawing on his dialectics of sensate love, psychical love, spiritual love, and self‐love, I show how Kierkegaard believes neighbor‐love should be impartial and yet exhibit some of the character of preferential romantic loves.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to lay the necessary conceptual and empirical groundwork of agape in organizations. Specifically, the authors reviewed literature on agape; advanced formal ...definition of agape; explained the relationship of agape with related variables; developed a scale to measure agape and provided evidence of its reliability and construct validity; showed how agape uniquely predicted employee outcomes beyond transformational leadership; and showed how agape compensated for the lack of transformational leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a survey with 214 working executives who rated their manager on transformational leadership and agape behaviours, and later indicated their own work attitudes. Next, the authors conducted a 20-min between-subjects vignette experiment with 147 business management students who were provided with a description of a supervisor and asked to indicate their work attitudes under the supervisor.
Findings
The authors advanced an operational definition and a scale to measure agape. The findings of this study indicated that agape was a unidimensional construct with high reliability. It had significant positive relationships with followers’ job satisfaction, faith and loyalty, team commitment, satisfaction and risk-taking; explained incremental variance in employee outcomes beyond transformational leadership; and compensated for the lack of transformational leadership.
Research limitations/implications
The present research has the potential to inform recruitment, selection, training, promotion and performance evaluation decisions in organizations.
Originality/value
The authors responded to calls for developing a clear and consistent conceptualization and operationalization of agape for improving scholarly research and leadership training and development.
Beyond Coronativism: The Need For Agape Uden, Annelies; Houtum, Henk
Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie,
July 2020, 2020-Jul, 2020-07-00, 20200701, Letnik:
111, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this contribution we focus on togetherness, as one of the key notions in the current COVID‐19 crisis. Globally, it is seen as vital to stand and act together to combat the virus, and avoid a ...tragedy of the commons, in which actors are acting out of self‐interest and counterproductively to the general interest. In this essay we analyse the current geographical dissonant developments that the required human togetherness across the globe is facing. We find that the main conflicting tendencies, that we summarise as utilitarian locking up, nationalistic locking in and exclusionary locking out, are all employing a notion of togetherness which is largely based on an in‐group solidarity based on either age, gender, ethnicity, nationality or fitness. We argue that such narrow definition of togetherness falls short in dealing with the crisis in an effective as well as non‐discriminatory manner, and potentially could even lengthen or worsen the corona crisis. We end with a plea for a different conceptualisation of solidarity in the combat of the crisis, a radical non‐dividing form of togetherness: agape.
In this essay we explain how the aim to overcome the corona crisis through togetherness is impeded by three counterproductive bordering tendencies: utilitarian locking up, nationalistic locking in and exclusionary locking out. We argue that this ongoing geopolitical b/ordering and othering of people along the lines of age, gender, nationality or ethnicity, what we together coin coronativism, falls short in dealing with the crisis in an effective as well as non‐discriminatory manner, and could even have autoimmune effects in terms of global health as well as in terms of democracy and rule of law. To effectively combat the crisis, we make a plea for the employment of a different conceptualisation of solidarity, a radical non‐dividing form of togetherness,beyond nativistic divides: agape.
Focussing on
Mr Fortune’s Maggot
and ‘The Salutation’, the essay argues that dialogues with Platonic philosophy and Pauline theology are finely threaded through Warner’s fictions. It suggests that ...Warner strips the ideas of
agape
and
eros
of their divine pretensions, confines them to the earth, and sees them in a profane light.
As Artificial Intelligence researchers attempt to emulate human intelligence and transhumanists work toward superintelligence, philosophers and theologians confront a dilemma: we must either, on the ...one horn, (1) abandon the view that the defining feature of humanity is rationality and propose an account of spirituality that dissociates it from reason; or, on the other horn, (2) find a way to invalidate the growing faith in a posthuman future shaped by the enhancements of Intelligence Amplification (IA) or the progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I grasp both horns of the dilemma and offer three recommendations. First, it is love understood as agape, not rational intelligence, which tells us how to live a godly life. Love tells us how to be truly human. Second, the transhumanist vision of a posthuman superintelligence is not only unrealistic, it portends the kind of tragedy we expect from a false messiah. Third, if as a byproduct of AI and IA research combined with H+ zeal the wellbeing of the human species and our planet is enhanced, we should be grateful.
The aim of this paper is to establish a series of links between some of the main religious formulas that arise in Judaism and Christianism and the romantic and confluent love characteristic of modern ...societies. To carry it out, firstly, we analyze love in historical Judaism, reflecting on the Ahavah formula, the predominant formula in this religious context. Secondly, to study the Christian drift of love, we first analyze how the emergence of this new religious faith (Christianism) provokes a change in the Jewish way of understanding it (love). Subsequently, we analyze some of the three main formulas in which love materializes in Christianism: Agape, Caritas, and Amor Sui. Regarding modern love, we first carry out a contextualization focused on the processes of secularization and individualization, and their impact on it. Afterwards, we present the main features that define both romantic and confluent love, and finally, we analyze the Judeo-Christian characters inherited for such types of love. The methodology used focused on a literature review and theoretical reflection based on this review. The research carried out allows us to establish sociological continuities between Judeo-Christian religious love and modern secular love in the terms used throughout the paper.
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