Doing the Right Thing : a Value Based Economy / Arjo Klamer.

"This book is for all those who are seeking a human perspective on economic and organizational processes. It lays the foundations for a value based approach to the economy. The key questions are: "What is important to you or your organization?" "What is this action or that organization good for?" The book is directed at the prevalence of instrumentalist thinking in the current economy and responds to the calls for another economy. Another economy demands another economics. The value based approach is another economics; it focuses on values and on the most important goods such as families, homes, communities, knowledge, and art. It places economic processes in their cultural context. What does it take to do the right thing, as a person, as an organization, as a society? What is the good to strive for? This book gives directions for the answers. The value based approach restores the ancient idea that quality of life and of society is what the economy is all about. It advocates shifting the focus from quantities ("how much?") to qualities ("what is important?").

Preface -- part I: Framing and raising awareness -- chapter 1. Doing the right thing at home; in the end it is the culture that matters -- chapter 2. Different ways of making sense of culture in relationship to the economy -- chapter 3. Doing the right thing is a matter of realizing values -- chpater 4. Phronesis is the virtue in making values real -- part II: The conceptual framework -- chapter 5. About values -- chapter 6. To realize values we need to procure goods, the most important of which are shared -- chapter 7. The goods to strive for are our ideals -- chapter 8. The sources for doing the right thing; about richness and poverty -- chapter 9. Realizing values in five different spheres: involving others -- chapter 10A. An exploration of the five spheres: logic, rhetoric, values and relationships. The oikos and the social and cultural spheres first -- chapter 10B. The market and governmental spheres, and the spillovers, overlaps among the five spheres -- chapter 11. So what? -- Bibliography -- Index.

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