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The Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century, provided guidance for running monasteries. Fourteen hundred years later, Henri Fayol developed his Principles of Management. Although from different times, Benedict’s Rule foreshadowed Fayol’s Principles and showed that the basics of management go back to antiquity.

The Rule of Benedict is over 1,500 years old. In spite of its antiquity, what relevance does it have to the modern world of work? When Benedict complied his rule he envisaged a spiritual community, cut off from the world, that would pray, work and be economically sustainable. He had little idea that this “little rule for beginners” would become one of the most important documents in Western civilisation. Neither did he realise that he was laying the foundations for one of the oldest “multi‐national” organisations in existence today. This paper examines what has kept this spiritual “global community” alive and its relevance to the workplace.

Management literature often neglects the business model developed by a monastic institution, as it does not fit the usual categorizations of an enterprise. Nevertheless, monastic institutions founded on Benedictine principles have proven to be economically viable and sustainable over centuries. This paper aims to examine, with the adoption of a single case study, the components of a Benedictine business model, their interrelationship and the role of sustainability.

This case study combines in-depth data collection from multiple sources such as field research, archival documents and publicly available information to examine the dynamic business operations of a Benedictine abbey.

The analysis suggests that the Rule of St Benedict and the Benedictine values, and a commitment to them, are important for the success of the Benedictine abbey concept and that the business model is both place-based and sustainable.

A single case study has its limitations compared to the use of multiple examples. Business model concepts are not simply applicable to a monastic institution and vice versa; the Benedictine model is not easily transferable to conventional enterprises.

Generalizations from a single case study are limited; nevertheless this paper offers practical implications through the study of a monastic institution, showing place-based and sustainable business practices from which management scholars can make assumptions.

This paper describes and analyses the inception, development and stabilization of a sustainable place-based business model of a Benedictine abbey according to three stages over a period of 35 years while evaluating the sustainable business model from its inception.

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.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the factors that influenced the establishment of modern management into the pervasive force it is today. It briefly describes modern management and discusses the reasons for this gap in knowledge in such a critical area. The main analysis of the paper focuses on the following social ideas and influences that created the conditions for modern management to be formed and established: social Darwinism and religion, the rise of social science, the promise of the scientific method, and the perspectives of the business tycoons.

This paper analyzes the prevailing trends of the late 1800 s to determine which had the greatest influence on the formation of modern management.

This paper concludes that the greatest factors on the establishment of modern management were social Darwinism and the promise of the scientific method. These, then, provided the perfect environment for Frederick W. Taylor to become the embodiment and popularizer of modern management. Perhaps, surprisingly, Christianity had little influence.

Now that the prevailing influences of modern management have been surfaced, scholars and practitioners can more effectively critique the current state of management and determine whether legacy assumptions and influences are still valid, or whether modern management should change in some way(s) to better reflect accurate assumptions and influences operative today. The anonymous reviewers of this paper have found this analysis to be provocative and challenging. They have also concluded that a single article cannot do justice to such an important, yet relatively unexplored area. Consequently, the authors hope that other researchers will also be provoked to join in this important task.

The paper aims to discuss liminal ethnography as a new approach for conducting research in segregated organisations.

The paper proposes liminality as a conceptual key to understanding both the condition of the organisational ethnographer and that of her interlocutors. Conversatio is the novel hermeneutical method that is discussed in conjunction with liminal ethnography.

Liminal ethnography as outlined in the paper emerged as an approach from preliminary contact with the organisational reality of the monastery as a type of total institution. Similarly, conversatio suggested itself as a method that maximises limited face to face contact with interlocutors whose access to the external world is restricted by a behavioural code enshrined in a Rule.

Paradoxically, the restrictions imposed on the researcher provided inspiration for the analytical approach proposed by the paper therefore initial limitations such as restricted access eventually spurred conceptual development.

The original approach should be of interest to organisational researchers operating in total institutions or in organisations where severely restricted access renders extant methodologies only partly applicable, if at all. The paper also discusses ethical issues arising from collaboration with rule‐governed communities.

This paper aims to analyse the governance structure of monasteries to gain new insights and apply them to solve agency problems of modern corporations. In an historic analysis of crises and closures it asks, if Benedictine monasteries were and are capable of solving agency problems. The analysis shows that monasteries established basic governance instruments very early and therefore were able to survive for centuries.

The paper uses a dataset of all Benedictine abbeys that ever existed in Bavaria, Baden‐Württemberg, and German‐speaking Switzerland to determine their lifespan and the reasons for closures. The governance mechanisms are analyzed in detail. Finally, it draws conclusions relevant to the modern corporation. The theoretical foundations are based upon principal agency theory, psychological economics, as well as embeddedness theory.

The monasteries that are examined show an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them dissolved as a result of agency problems. This paper argues that this success is due to an appropriate governance structure that relies strongly on internal control mechanisms.

Benedictine monasteries and stock corporations differ fundamentally regarding their goals. Additional limitations of the monastic approach are the tendency to promote groupthink, the danger of dictatorship and the life long commitment.

The paper adds new insights into the corporate governance debate designed to solve current agency problems and facilitate better control.

By analyzing monasteries, a new approach is offered to understand the efficiency of internal behavioral incentives and their combination with external control mechanisms in corporate governance.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the role of spirituality, understood as a personal relationship with God, in missionary intercultural experience.

We conducted narrative interviews with eight Polish consecrated missionaries in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay. We used thematic analysis to establish spirituality in missionary experience and narrative analysis to examine sensemaking processes.

Missionary spirituality was defined by a personal relationship with God as a source of consolation, psychological comfort, strength to cope with distressing experiences, and Grace promoting self-improvement. It compensated for the lack of family and psychological support and enhanced psychological adjustment to the environment perceived as dangerous. Spirituality helped missionaries deal with cultural challenges, traumatic and life-threatening events. Traumatic experiences furthered their understanding of the mission and triggered a spiritual transition that entailed a change in their life, attitudes and behavior.

Comparative research into religious vs nonreligious individual spirituality in the experience across various types of expats in various locations could capture the professional and cultural specificity of individual spirituality. Research is also needed to link spirituality with expat failure.

Catholic agencies and institutions that dispatch missionaries to dangerous locations should consider providing professional psychological assistance. Narrative interviewing could be used to enhance missionaries' cultural and professional self-awareness, to better serve the local community. Their stories of intercultural encounters could be incorporated into cross-cultural training and the ethical and spiritual formation of students and future expats.

This study captures a spiritual aspect of intercultural experience of under-researched expats. It offers a model of the involvement of individual spirituality in coping in mission.