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Buddhism, a globalizing religion, offers a remarkable opportunity to test different hypotheses and models coined in the field of “economics of religion.” Since their foundation over 25 centuries ago, Buddhist ethics have always epitomized extra-worldly and noneconomic philosophies of renunciation. And in the context of globalization, contemporary Buddhist voices praise resistance to the human-engineered damage caused by expansive capitalism. Buddhist traditions have, however, always followed commercial routes and have been involved, although indirectly, in economic affairs. The globalization of Buddhism perpetuates this tendency but also uncovers the rise of “new” relationships between Asian tradition and (capitalistic) economy, in the realm of religious values, behaviors, and organization. This chapter aims at differentiating three models: Buddhism and economy, Buddhist economics, and the economics of Buddhism. It raises questions about the relevance of the “economic”-inspired conceptualization of Buddhist forms and dynamics.

Based on ethnographic data and a textual analysis, this chapter highlights the process of “therapization” of Buddhism in Western countries, with a specific emphasis on Tibetan Buddhism in France. Referring to the paradigm of “political economy of health”, as developed in recent medical anthropology, it attempts to explore the relationships between two concepts – economics and health – that had previously been considered separately, in the context of Western Buddhism. Further, this chapter's aim is to expose a potential application of theoretical economic models in an anthropological approach of Buddhist diffusion and appropriation in the West.

This chapter discusses inspiration and innovation through social transformation taking place in Asia through leadership utilizing concepts of Buddhism. In India, values of the Buddhist dhamma are grounded in a permeating esthetic system dating back to early historical times. It was lost there and revitalized in 1956. For Taiwan, inspiration came in the name of humanistic Buddhism that developed in late 19th century China. It offered a moral and practical value system for society at large.

Buddhism became socially engaged as part of a cultural ethos for over a generation with underlying integrated roots in local beliefs, esthetics, and practices. The broader question to discuss is how Buddhist values influence policy leadership. Here, we feature engaged Buddhism that emphasizes awareness, compassion, and non-violence, while embracing modern ways of organizing and communication.

Cases are provided where Buddhism has shaped leaders’ roles and aims, as well as those of followers guiding reforms for best governance. In India Dr. Ambedkar (1891–1956) embraced Buddhism as a platform for deliverance and championed social equality. His life’s struggle concerned issues of caste, as he was born “untouchable.” The second example is about Dhamma Master Cheng Yen (b. 1937) who established Tzu Chi in eastern Taiwan as a relief agency that became international. Both leaders helped life’s embetterment through Buddhism based on modernity, science, advanced technology, leadership, and democracy. These examples of engaged Buddhism have made tremendous impact pertaining to the people of their nation and serve a model for world development.

Social and environmental accounting research manifests varying levels of awareness of critical global problems and the need to develop alternative approaches to dealing with economy and society. This paper explores Buddhist thought and, specifically, Buddhist economics as a means to informing this debate. We draw on and expand Schumacher's ideas about ‘Buddhist economics’, first articulated in the 1960s. Our analysis centres on Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path and associated Buddhist teachings. The examination includes assumptions, means and ends of Buddhist approaches to economics; these are compared and contrasted with conventional economics.To consider how thought and practice may be bridged, we examine a practical application of Buddhism's Middle Way, in the form of Thailand's current work with ‘Sufficiency Economy’.Throughout the paper, we explore the implications for the development of social accounting, looking for mutual interactions between Buddhism and social accounting thought and practice.

The article aims to present a new aspect of “the emergent identities” in Thailand with a correlation between morality and religiosity. The research deals with the perception of 65 Thai male-to-female transgender sex workers who are currently working in sex tourism in Pattaya and Bangkok. This article explores the role religion plays, the linkages between sexualities, and the potential for Thai Theravada Buddhist individuals to understand the way that they cope with life and interpret its meaning among these sexual minorities. Finally, the article shows how Thai marginalized Theravada Buddhists are negotiating their gendered religious spaces in Thailand.

The study investigates perceptions of religion and its role in the lives of Thai Buddhist male-to-female transgender sex workers. Almost all the qualitative data was collected sequentially through (1) focus group discussions, (2) small group discussions, and (3) in-depth interviews. All interview sessions took place over six months in 2019. The researcher is a native Thai speaker and conducted the interviews in Thai with selected sex workers over 20 years old who have at least one year of experience engaging in sex work.

The research found three principal characteristics of “lived religion” in which emergent identities negotiate sexuality and morality: (1) Buddhist dequeering (the way Buddhism operates conservatively to reinforce heteronormativity), (2) queering Buddhism amidst multiple oppressions (how Buddhism operates to complement queer identity and empowerment), and (3) queering Buddhism as enlightenment (Buddhism with an emphasis on “practice” and “spiritual development”). The paper discusses how institutional Buddhism creates and recreates gendered identities in complex ways.

The article shows how Thai marginalized Theravada-Buddhism are negotiating their gendered religious spaces and “buy” the right to sexual and anatomy within their families and society by providing financial support, engaging in religion practices, donating in social charity projects base on their faith and capacity.

The paper is supporting human right movements and dignity for sexual minorities gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender questioning, intersex (LGBTQI+) in Thailand. The paper also promotes equality to all human beings and shows a struggle for the basic human rights of sexual minorities in religion. The paper is raising awareness to religion's rights for all to look beyond distinctions of gender and class which may help to shape future history.

This article examines how Thai transgender sex workers utilize the non-essentialist philosophy of Theravada Buddhism. The paper finds that respondents are negotiating their religious spaces through the linkages among their gender, body, embodiment, identities, and sexualities. Despite most respondents believe that being born “a kathoey” as a result of bad karma, they use the Buddhist teachings of karma to explain their identities and even to lead a meaningful life to gain more merits for a better rebirth.

Thailand still lacks research on queer spiritualities and Buddhism. The article has seen challenges to the human rights of sexual minorities in religion. The solution is to increase awareness of the concepts of sex, gender, and sexualities and broaden the understanding of “endless performativity” and “gender diversification” (Butler, 1990) for gender sensitivity and gender responsiveness in creating “social equality” for all member societies in public campaigns, and media launched by the state and NGOs.

In recognition of the potential for Buddhism to advance sustainability, this paper aims to investigate whether Buddhism appears to be informing the sustainability practices of corporations within a particular national context. Corporate sustainability reports are used as a site of analysis.

Sixteen corporate sustainability reports from a set of sustainability award-winning corporations in Sri Lanka, a country with a strong Buddhist presence, are analysed. Evidence of Buddhist principles and values related to sustainability is sought to ascertain the extent to which Buddhism is evident in disclosures within the reports. The influence of global institutions is also considered.

Analysis reveals surprisingly little evidence of Buddhist principles and values in the corporate sustainability reports of these award-winning corporations. Sustainability reporting practices are revealed to be highly institutionalised by global influences, with the majority of the reports examined explicitly embracing global standardisation. The standardisation of corporate sustainability reporting through the pursuit of globally accepted reporting frameworks is argued to have caused a disconnect between Buddhism as a prevalent institutional force in the local culture and context and the corporate representations evident in such reporting. Potential consequences of this disconnect in relation to the ability for Buddhism to inform sustainability practices at the organisational level are considered.

The paper contributes to the literature on corporate sustainability reporting through considering whether local cultural context is represented within such reports and possible reasons and consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between Buddhism/Taoism and dividend payout decisions among Chinese listed firms during 2003-2013.

The authors include all Chinese A-share listed stocks in their sample during 2003-2013 and use a multiple regression method to conduct their analyses.

Their findings suggest that firms in regions with high influence of Buddhism and Taoism lean toward having high dividend payouts. The results are robust to a battery of alternative specifications in dividend payout, religiosity measures, research methods and dividend regulation regimes.

They show that the religions of Buddhism/Taoism play a role in determining dividend payout, complementing other informal institution studies of dividend policy. They complement the literature by providing insights into the impact of Buddhism and Taoism on corporate behaviors beyond immoral or unethical practices. They are able to relate specific doctrinal tenets of Buddhism and Taoism to corporate behavior rather than using only the general moral and ethical guidelines of religiosity.

This study explores whether and how Buddhism impacts corporate cash holdings. Buddhist culture affects investors' perception of how cash is deployed and then influences corporate cash holdings. This study first examines the impact of Buddhism on corporate cash holdings and then investigates whether formal governance mechanisms such as legal institutions and institutional ownership influence the relationship between Buddhism and corporate cash holdings.

The authors conduct empirical tests with data on Chinese listed companies between 2006 and 2019. Buddhism is measured with the natural logarithm of the number of Buddhist temples within a radius of a certain distance around a firm's headquarters. The authors adopt the OLS method to regress and take the 2SLS method, Heckman selection model and FEVD approach to address the endogeneity issue.

The results show a positive relationship between Buddhism and corporate cash holdings. This positive relation is more prominent for firms located in regions with weak legal institutions and for firms with low institutional ownership. Further analysis shows that Buddhism works through the channel of alleviating agency problems and finally improves the value of cash to investors.

The authors’ findings have important implications. First, this study provides inspiration for incorporating the ethical values of traditional cultures, such as Buddhism, into the corporate governance system. Second, the findings imply that informal institutions can influence corporate financial decisions beyond the effect of formal institutions, suggesting that informal systems should be emphasized when dealing with business affairs in countries where legal institutions are relatively weak. Third, the results suggest the significance of encouraging research on religious culture to explore its active role in corporate governance.

This study illustrates the positive value of religious culture in advancing corporate governance by relating Buddhism to corporate cash holdings based on the explanation of investors' perception. It makes a marginal contribution to the literature that investigates the determinants of cash policies and explores the firm-level consequences of religious culture, adding to the research area of culture and corporate finance.

The purpose of this paper is to review Buddhism as a potential reform instrument in the workplace and discuss some obstacles in making that happen.

By the use of literature review and interviews, Buddhism's establishment in the USA is reviewed, a brief overview of Buddhism in general is provided, Buddhism is considered within the light of the spirit at work discourse, and the current discourse on implementing Buddhist practices in the workplace is reviewed.

It is found that Buddhist practices are becoming more widely accepted but the fact that they are called “Buddhist” practices may be a barrier in massive acceptance.

The information was gathered from literature and disputed by pro‐Buddhist individuals (monks and lay persons), which may leave room for some bias in view sharing.

Buddhist practices, when perceived as ethical values, make perfect sense, and could help instigate a positive turnaround in general feelings about work and experiences at work.

Buddhism has not been discussed broadly within the scope of management practices. While Buddhism is generally endorsed in this paper, the discourses here discussed present a realistic view on points of caution when considering promoting Buddhist values in work environments.

The paper aims to identify the form and significance of the influence of Buddhism upon the nature of past and future national economic change. It is divided to address two major tasks. The first section analyses the world view and behavioural prescriptions of Buddhism and examines their compatibility with the requirements commonly presumed for economic development. This analysis suggests that, contrary to conventional views, Buddhism has many positive features consistent with processes and change leading to growth in economic welfare (especially under the modern ecologically sustainable development framework). The second section consists of an empirical analysis of comparative social, economic and environmental indicators across nations where Buddhism is likely to have had a substantial influence. Although few regularities are identified across the entire group of nations, some internal similarities are noted together with discussion of the importance of historical factors and development potentiality linked to the influence of Buddhism. The analysis provides a useful overview of relative conditions and trends in Buddhist‐influenced nations on a diverse range of social, economic and environmental indicators.