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In current economic systems, the role played by non-profit and voluntary organisations is relevant. Several studies analyse the development of these organisations and suggest reasons related to the dissemination of policies that first consider public intervention and then ‘the third way’ of the economy as a way to increase wealth and support economic development. In this context, it should be noted that:

• Modern non-profit organisations (NPOs) take the form of enterprises encouraging the development of capabilities to satisfy human needs in terms of production of goods and utilities.

• A systematic cooperation with the local context (i.e. enterprises and Public Administration) is becoming increasingly more important for the survival and development of NPOs.

• Excellent opportunities for economic and social growth and for mutual development can develop from this type of cooperation.

• Starting from this premise, the purpose of the research is to suggest some insight on the theme of cooperation between for-profit and non-profit world in the light of the thought of Church’s Social Doctrine, and in particular, of the Encyclical Letter of Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate – On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth. In this sense, the contribution is a conceptual work; the study could improve with empirical research concerning the level of diffusion and the form of collaborations for-profit/non-profit in the Italian context.

Modern non-profit organisations (NPOs) take the form of enterprises encouraging the development of capabilities to satisfy human needs in terms of production of goods and utilities.

A systematic cooperation with the local context (i.e. enterprises and Public Administration) is becoming increasingly more important for the survival and development of NPOs.

Excellent opportunities for economic and social growth and for mutual development can develop from this type of cooperation.

Starting from this premise, the purpose of the research is to suggest some insight on the theme of cooperation between for-profit and non-profit world in the light of the thought of Church’s Social Doctrine, and in particular, of the Encyclical Letter of Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate – On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth. In this sense, the contribution is a conceptual work; the study could improve with empirical research concerning the level of diffusion and the form of collaborations for-profit/non-profit in the Italian context.

From a methodological point of view, after a literature review on NPOs and corporate social responsibility, the chapter analyses reasons, strategies and tools of collaborations between non-profit and for-profit worlds (the role of Public Administration and hybrid organisation is excluded). Then, focus moves up on Church’s Social Doctrine and Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate with particular attention to the topic analysed in this chapter (collaboration for-profit/non-profit enterprises). The vision emerging from the Encyclical is that the dichotomy between for-profit and NPOs should be resolved by striving for the development of a ‘civil economy’ with the capacity to promote the overall development of the human being. The research highlights the importance of dissemination of initiatives promoted predominantly by NPOs, with the objective of stimulating and supporting the implementation of forms of structured collaboration; we are sure that a ‘connection point’ between for-profit and non-profit is now necessary.

The encyclical Centesimus Annus was published by Pope John Paul II in commemoration of Rerum Novarum, written 100 years ago by Leo XIII. That encyclical initiated a century of Catholic social teaching consisting, by now, of six encyclicals. Together, they are intended to represent a unified system of thought, the Church′s social vision. Its basic themes all centre on the God‐ordained dignity of man. The Pope calls for a modified, “corrected” capitalism, a “Society of free work, of enterprise and of participation”. The economic activities of man are to be reoriented towards the common good, with the ultimate goal of eradicating poverty, exploitation, and alienation. Rejects the economic proposals of the Pope as lacking of substance and internal consistency. Its assumption that man can enjoy all the advantages of free markets while also correcting for their less‐desirable effects at will reveals that, despite some modifications, Catholic social thought is still inspired by what has been termed the “unconstrained” vision.

The author traces over a century of Catholic social teaching from Leo XIII to John Paul II, emphasizing in particular workplace democracy and labor unions. Until John Paul II, Gruenberg argues, the Church’s teaching on labor organizations was deliberately ambiguous. Leo XIII had the greatest problem because of the extreme diversity among union movements throughout the industrialized world and the drive of Marxism to take the lead in solving workers’ problems. Pius XI saw the Great Depression as a sign that Marx might be right, and did his best to offer an alternative in the form of worker cooperatives and union‐management co‐determination. However, John Paul II stated unequivocally that labor unions are “indispensable” for workplace justice, and collective bargaining is just another name for workplace democracy. Unions are seen by John Paul II as the democratic institutions that form a bulwark against the abuse of workers at the hands of either the employer or the state. A detailed reading list is attached.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of church in relation to state in providing support for needy.

The analysis takes place in a Nordic welfare state context between two recessions in the early 1990s and late 2000s. The welfare state regime hypothesis suggests that the kind of traditional assistance the church lends to the poor would die out in the course of “socio‐democratic” welfare state development, a statement analogous with the secularization hypothesis.

With data on the volume of poverty alleviation activities of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church it is shown that after decades of marginalization, the role of the church's poverty alleviation became more pronounced after the recession in the early 1990s and continued to do so throughout the economic collapse of 2008.

The results give ground to challenge the conventional clear cut conception of the universal Nordic welfare state model.

European welfare state research has focused on the links between religious values, religious cleavages and the shaping of the welfare state but has mostly ignored the role of faith‐based institutions in improving welfare. The current economic crisis may provide religious institutions a window of opportunity to expand their poverty alleviation activities.

This paper aims to focus on business education, which should not exclude strains of religious ethical traditions, e.g. Catholic social thought, and the practical wisdom embodied in them.

Recent traditions of social Catholicism starting from the Papal Social Message Rerum Novarum (1891) are summarized. Consequences for management development are drawn.

The recent tradition of social Catholicism developed as a result of a broad cultural process of adaptation of Christians to the emerging social context of a modern society. New types of ethical orientation have been developed, sometimes in strong opposition to contemporary ideological concepts such as socialism, materialism, or elitist capitalism. Even in the globalized environment of the twenty‐first century these orientations are of continuing relevance, e.g. in organizational behavior, in business and society relations, and in basic concepts of corporate responsibility.

Religious ethical traditions embody elements of “practical wisdom” that are threatened by extinction in the global practice of management development. The current financial and economic crisis – also addressed in a recent document of Pope Benedict XVI – should also be perceived in that perspective.

A business ethics evaluation of Social Catholicism and its practical wisdom is executed.

We discuss a recent effort of institutional resistance in the context of the 2008–2011 Apostolic Visitation of U.S. women religious motivated by Vatican concerns about perceived secularism and potential lack of fidelity among Catholic sisters. We examined the process of and women’s responses to the Visitation to shed light on the institutional work associated with productive resistance and the role of identity and emotions in transforming institutions.

At a time when the male leadership can be blamed for leading the church to a state of crisis – a time when the voices of women are needed more than ever – even the modest roles accorded to female clerics have come under attack. The specific reasons for the investigation are unclear (or, more probably, not public), but the suspicion, clearly, can be put in the crassest terms: too many American nuns have gone off the reservation.

– Lisa Miller, Female Troubles, Newsweek, May 27, 2010

At a time when the male leadership can be blamed for leading the church to a state of crisis – a time when the voices of women are needed more than ever – even the modest roles accorded to female clerics have come under attack. The specific reasons for the investigation are unclear (or, more probably, not public), but the suspicion, clearly, can be put in the crassest terms: too many American nuns have gone off the reservation.

This chapter attempts to offer a clearer look at the historical roots of the founding of mutualist finance. Without denying that the various forms of financial mutualism may have legal and organizational roots in ancient times, the author considers what, for contemporary mutualist banks, may constitute the soul.

In its first part, the document presents the individual constructions that existed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in a context in which economic development and the industrial revolution banished the rules and standards of the former society. It refers to Utopian socialisms as opposed to the scientific solutions proposed for a new social organization and to the new solidarism according to Léon Bourgeois. Christian sources are also called to mind with social Christianity (Protestant) and social Catholicism until the birth of the social doctrine of the Church.

This frenzy of ideas as well as the confrontation with reality led to the birth, in Germany, of the first experiments with alternative finance. This is the subject of the second part of this chapter, which then develops the bank mutualism created by the founding fathers, F.W. Raiffeisen and H. Schulze-Delitzsch.

The historical description of the creation of mutualist banks brings up two major problems when talking about the “other finance”: the interest and activity of the bank. Is an ethical finance capable of proposing a credible alternative? This is a question that needs to be answered in the light of history.

This chapter attempts, more than 150 years after the fact, to demonstrate the ponderous presence of the question and the permanence of the founding ideas in order to comprehend the facts and propose ideas for analysis and construction of an “other finance.”

The equal representation of employees on codetermined supervisory boards is one of the distinctive features of the German corporate governance system. This study aims to examine the relevance of the frequent assumption according to which this system is rooted in a typically “German culture”.

This research applies Davis and Thompson’s (1994) mobilization theory as an interpretive grid to historical sources to reveal the determinants of the institutionalization of equal board representation in post-war Germany.

The present contribution reveals that the supposedly “German tradition” of board representation is a myth. The specific regime of codetermined supervisory boards is instead the outcome of the dramatic political and institutional circumstances of the late 1940s, which saw fierce struggles and the mobilization of various actors ranging from politicians and industrialists to trade unionists.

The German Catholic Church is shown to have played a significant, albeit seldom recognized, role in this search for institutional consensus. It acted as a broad-based “supporting institution”, positively influencing mobilization efforts in favor of board codetermination and ultimately enabling an agreement to be reached.

Beginning with value premises of any kind, clearly one may judge the economic choices of individuals, since they are only part of moral behaviour in general. But my concern here is with the institutions which both shape and are shaped by behaviour, and which are greatly responsible for social good and evil. How successfully may one get from theological values underpinned by religious faith and dogma to valid judgements and recommendations for economic institutions and policy? Further, must they be contingent on the intervention of economic science, introducing specialised information and analysis and such goals as cost and output efficiency? These are the matters I propose to discuss in general terms and illustrate from Laborem Exercens and Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis to reach some conclusions.

John Paul II's views on economic systems have been construed differently by some commentators who have been seeking approval for their own views rather than searching for the meaning that he himself intends to convey. John Paul is labeled by many as favoring capitalism, and by others as supporting socialism. A few have been scrutinizing his statements in hopes of finding support for a “third‐way.” In this paper, John Paul is quoted at length to represent his views more accurately.

This paper originated in a collection of essays on the theme of John Paul II's vision of the social economy that was published by the International Journal of Social Economics in fall 1998. This author is indebted to the contributors to that collection for many insights into John Paul's vision. Eight topics are covered: consumption, distribution, capital investment, work as such, leisure, labor, development, and market economy versus command economy. This paper uses many more direct quotes than is customary in scholarly work, but there is no other way to proceed and remain faithful to John Paul's vision of the social economy.

John Paul's writings on economic affairs are significant for what they teach about the premises employed in economics. His own philosophy of the human person reinforces the four premises of personalist economics more so than the premises of the mainstream and challenges the mainstream at its foundations in the philosophy of individualism.

John Paul speaks to a wide range of issues and questions central to economics and economic affairs. It would be presumptuous to represent this paper as a thorough examination of everything that John Paul has said, written, and means in this regard.

This paper attempts to highlight some of the key arguments that John Paul II has set forth on eight centrally important economic topics, comparing and contrasting his pronouncements with the views of mainstream economists on the same topics.

This paper draws on the insights of 20 professional colleagues specialized in range of subdisciplines in economics, holding faculty positions at major universities in the USA, Italy, and Canada, and with a strong interest in understanding the social economy. The concluding section states John Paul's vision of the social economy in terms of 13 most important arguments.