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I investigate the efficacy of adopting two mental aptitudes in the financial industry: mindfulness and compassion.

A conceptual link is drawn between the powerful mental acuteness obtained from practicing Mindfulness (defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn) and Ruthless Compassion (defined by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoché) and the pursuit of a noble purpose for finance, which is to channel resources into the most deserving social and/or economic activities that raise community and societal welfare.

These techniques allow decision-makers to reach new levels of awareness, giving them a competitive advantage for instance in terms of avoiding behavioral traps. Making money remains an important by-product of financial services, but not the overriding or sole criterion. An interview of Solomon Halpern, longstanding disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoché, expert in Buddhist meditation, and president of Highlander Wealth Services, illustrates how these mental tools are applied for running a small US equity fund.

The present study provides a starting point for further survey research on how these practices are becoming adopted in the industry.

This chapter is the first to analyze the impact of both ruthless compassion and mindfulness in the business of finance not only in terms of raised morality but also as an added tool to resolve informational asymetries proper to the finance business.

The purpose of this paper is to reinterpret Attali’s worldview through the lenses of liberalism and Buddhism by mobilizing the relevant literature, beyond the mere book review. This paper is an essay based on the book “Devenir Soi” by Jacques Attali, published in France in 2014. These analytical grids were chosen, because freedom and self-realization are two themes that pervade the book.

After presenting the book structure, the objective and the methodological approach, we uncover Attali’s interrogation, namely how to free oneself from the omnipresence of evil, the withering away of the State and growing xenophobic populist self-entitlement. We make explicit Attali’s liberalism and plea for freedom, and we present a critical discussion of his method, based on the idea of selfness essentialism and a novel comparison with Buddhism. Finally, we assess the overall success of Attali’s intellectual endeavor.

Attali’s thesis is generally consistent and solid. Nevertheless, a few weaknesses are identified.

Anybody willing to read Attali’s book as a self-development book will gain some valid insights with this paper.

Attali’s book is largely centered on the individual. Yet, through the lenses of liberalism and Buddhism, a new vision of society is put forward.

Attali enjoys an international reputation as an intellectual, economist and essayist. Devenir Soi has not yet been translated in English. More than a mere translation, the present paper will bring his ideas to the fore in the English-speaking world.

Is corporate culture a key to commercial success? The results of a survey, carried out in 1989, in which senior executives of the largest retailers in the UK describe the key characteristics of their corporate cultures, and how their cultures are maintained and evolve, are outlined. They also rank “corporate culture” alongside 14 other key factors which strongly influence corporate strategy or competitive advantage. Three clusters emerge: those who rank people‐related values highly, those who are predominantly market‐led, and those who value “hard” factors such as financial control.

To lay the ground for a future diversification of academic finance in line with on-going sustainability issues.

We situate academic finance within the broader spectrum of social sciences and highlight its ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions. This brings out the limitations of paradigmatic unity in finance and the ideological aspects of academic finance, and allows us to characterise diversification in finance with reference to the nested epistemological structure of scientific discourse.

We define the diversification of academic finance as a process by which (i) finance research is extended to other existing paradigms in social sciences; (ii) new research metaphors are developed within the current paradigm and (iii) puzzle-solving robustness is achieved. We develop a new research agenda which are divided down into themes, paradigmatic hypotheses, and research questions.

We do not test any particular implications of our research agenda.

This chapter will be a useful reference for any researcher or practitioner seeking to contribute to the diversification of academic finance, and make finance work for society.

This chapter looks at academic finance from an interdisciplinary angle in order to bring out its limitations and carve out an innovative research agenda.

This study explores the phenomenon of compassionate leadership, a promising concept in management literature. Despite significant contributions towards the understanding of its antecedents and consequences, the specific role of compassion concerning the leader behavior under extreme pressure remains unexplored.

Drawing empirically on the case of three banks under three different logics, the authors trace how heads of banking branches, namely, middle managers, deal with the paradoxical phenomenon of integrating their human nature with the coetaneous need to achieve aggressive objectives. The authors analyzed interviews using the interpretive research method (Hatch and Yanow, 2003).

The authors identified that the logic of savings banks and credit cooperatives, together with specific human elements, created a healthier environment to develop compassionate behaviors compared to commercial banks. The authors found coherence when linking the institutional message of putting the spotlight on a personalized treatment of customers, and the middle manager compassionate actions towards customers and subordinates.

Suggestions for future theorizing and research are advanced, along with constructive practical implications to rehumanize the dark side of banking for both employees and customers.

The findings provided in this paper are original because they provide further evidence of linking business logics with compassionate leadership of middle managers and its impact on employees and customers.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to trigger a transcendental concern toward building the spiritual capital (SC) particularly focused on the highly relevant domain of work. In doing so, this conceptual framework focuses on potential antecedents and outcomes of the SC.

Such an endeavor is premised on the Christian's teaching that advocates the need for gathering spiritual treasures (i.e. capital). Secondly, the foray into Spiritism Doctrine (SD) literature is due to the fact that this doctrine considers the spiritual construct as the cornerstone of its principles and tenets. Thirdly, it also examines the related perceptions and approaches from the fields of positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship, workplace spirituality and psychology of religion.

The model invites the individual to capitalize on salient virtues and remarkable human qualities so as to build a SC, namely: humility, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, positive emotions, connections/relationships and sense of cooperation. Finally, it is envisaged that the attempt to create a SC may lead the individual to a feeling of well-being and more resilience at work.

At last, the implications to develop a SC in the context of work are sizeable. After all, it implies to add more concerns to one's career much beyond those strictly functional or professional ones. Rather, it means to regard the work domain through unusual lens.

By bringing the conceptual framework of SC to the forefront of management, spirituality and religion studies through an interdisciplinary approach showed that it is not an elusive or mythical topic. On the contrary, this analysis revealed that this is a serious and surprisingly neglected issue that deserves further attention in light of the benefits that it can potentially yield.

According to conventional research and political conceptions, illicit drug scenes are often characterised by cultures of crime, violence and deceit and customarily met by repressive law enforcement. However, a growing body of research demonstrates the very diverse nature of drug subcultures. This paper aims to explore this diversity and thereby investigates the psychosocial and socio-spatial features people selling and/or using drugs in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (DTES) attribute to the local drug scene.

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 persons with drug selling and/or using experiences in the DTES. Interviews were analysed and interpreted according to grounded theory.

Participants represent the social fabric of the DTES drug scene as comprising complexly interwoven facets and structures including frequent, brutal violence on the one hand and sincere, heart-rending compassion, care and even love on the other.

Police and social and health services can cooperate constructively with the overriding aim of individual and social harm reduction. Thereby, the existing social network and prosocial orientations of a drug scene can be used in effective approaches such as participatory policy strategies and peer-driven interventions.