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The “classical” logic of organisations existing as generators of shareholder value, with the human “resources” seen as a means to this end, has been the subject of criticism regarding alienation in its members and the instrumentalisation both of work and of people. This paper aims to look at the way a medieval monastic rule is used to govern secular for‐profit organisations and trace its potential relevance as an alternative example for the structure and governance of organisations today.

Based on an in‐depth case study, the paper critically discusses the feasibility of applying aspects of the rule of Saint Benedict (RSB) to modern organisations.

Some of the principles of the RSB (such as fitting jobs around people, inverse delegation, and a critical attitude towards organisational growth) are quite different from standard management practice. Yet these monastic organisations turn out to be highly successful businesses with remarkably low employee turnover and high profitability.

The paper claims that the principles of the RSB can contribute, outside of the monastic context, to the creation and running of more “humane” organisations.

The paper illustrates that several of these monastic communities are important commercial organisations in their own right, producing goods and services for the market place. Some are businesses with multi‐million euro turnovers, the scale of whose activities compels them to rely on lay employees from outside the monastery on conventional contracts of employment. Yet these outsiders are managed under the same principles of the RSB as the monks.

The paper aims to show how professional identity is constructed at a very early stage of initial management education. In so doing, it questions the notion of le métier in management.

The paper is based on a study of the experiences of six French management apprentices (or apprentis) who participated in a management apprentice programme in 2005. The research methodology is qualitative and illuminates the process of professional identity building. The central question of the study concerns the manager as an individual, an actor, and the link between the individual and his or her métier.

The findings suggest that from their very first immersion into the real world of corporate employment at junior management level, students construct different types of professional identity which can be shown as a 2×2 matrix whose independent axes are the type of acting displayed by the apprentis; and the degree to which the apprentis enacted their roles. This can be interpreted using the coupling system metaphor. Some of these types of professional identity are born of cynicism and disillusion engendered by their experiences.

The research is based on a small number of students drawn from one business school and concentrated in one job function – marketing.

The paper draws attention to the implications of the findings for those in business schools and organisations concerned with the formation of professional identity in young graduates.

The article proposes a new model for the formation of professional identity; and is the first study that deals with the French Apprenti manager programme.

To describe and analyse the Compagnons du Devoir (CdD), a French Compagnonnage; that is, a labour brotherhood and a community of practice; and to identify the reasons for its success as a human resource development system (HRD).

A one‐off case study of the CdD using data gathered by the authors in their capacity as members of a Conseil Scientifique evaluating a project to internationalise the CdD's approach to vocational education and training (VET). Primary sources include the UK apprentices who passed through the system, and employees of the Compagnons du Devoir.

Much of the success of the CdD rests on its capacity to develop knowledge, skills, and savoir‐être in young people through the volume of off‐the‐job training; near‐peer and peer mentoring, the systematic use of older and retired workers and the management of movement and change through a network of residential colleges.

The research design is a single case study, whose primary data is cross‐sectional, and based largely on data gathered from UK rather than French apprentices. Policy implications include the importance of a training rich in culture and humanity for the training of young people.

These include the positive role of older workers in VET; the importance of off‐the‐job training and mentoring; and the centrality of geographic flexibility in knowledge creation.

The paper is a case study of a French Compagnonnage from a managerial/HR perspective rather than those of labour history or sociology. It describes and analyses the functioning of the CdD using the idea of the honour principle. The CdD's approach to HRD can be usefully contrasted with that offered by other national systems.

Benedictine abbeys are highly stable organisations that have existed for almost 1,500 years. The extant literature ascribes this stability in part to the notion of Benedictine governance, which centres on the Rule of St Benedict (RB). An integral part of Benedictine governance is the cellarer, who plays a role comparable to that of a chief financial officer (CFO) in a traditional corporation. Unlike corporations, however, in which the CFO has emerged into a more important role over the past few decades, the cellarer has been an official position in Benedictine abbeys since the introduction of the RB in the sixth century. The present paper aims to explore the cellarer's role and assesses which parts of it could be reasonably transferred to the corporate world.

Informed by organisational role theory, the authors conducted a single case study in an Austrian Benedictine abbey. The authors used group discussions and semi-structured interviews as the main research instruments.

The authors find that the cellarer's behaviour shows strong signs of stewardship, which could serve as a role model for corporate CFOs. However, because of the studied abbey's situation of financial distress, the cellarer also experienced severe role conflicts rooted in his obedience to the abbot, the high involvement of the abbey in the local economy, and the cellarer's conscience as a Christian monk. From these findings, the authors describe those aspects of the cellarer's role that should thus be avoided for corporate CFOs.

The presented findings are based on a single case study. Therefore, because of the contextual factors idiosyncratic to the abbey under investigation, the results must be interpreted with care. Nevertheless, the findings explain the cellarer's role and depict its potential benefits for the corporate world, which should induce further research.

This is the first paper to explore in-depth the cellarer's role as well as one of the first to transfer the potential benefits of single roles rooted in Benedictine governance to the corporate world.

This paper aims to analyze how performance may be defined in the context of a religious organization. The authors do so by studying the case of a Benedictine abbey.

Using an etymologically derived understanding of performance, and predominantly based on the Regula Benedicti (the central guideline for Benedictine monks), the authors first conceptually develop an understanding of performance in Benedictine abbeys. The authors then apply this understanding in a single case study.

The authors found that in order to comply with the Benedictine mission laid out in the Regula Benedicti, Benedictine abbeys need to balance sacred and secular goals. The authors also derived six key actions in order to accomplish these goals. The case study shows that an imbalance in these key actions may cause severe (financial) distress.

The study provides an alternative framing of the term “performance” and further evidence that only a combined pursuit of sacred and secular goals seems useful for religious organizations. Researchers interested in religious organizations might find the conceptual approach and findings useful to analyze performance in such organizations.

Benedictine abbeys and other religious organizations may find the analysis valuable to critically analyze their current strategies and focal activities. Moreover, this paper's results might also be worthwhile for other faith-based or third-sector organizations when seeking an alternative framing of performance.

This paper provides a new framing of “performance” and is the first to analyze what performance might mean in the context of a Benedictine abbey.