Religious Intensity,Evangelical Christianity,and Business Ethics: An Empirical Study

Research on the relationship between religious commitment and business ethics has produced widely varying results and made the impact of such commitment unclear. This study presents an empirical investigation based on a questionnaire survey of business managers and professionals in the United States yielding a database of 1234 respondents. Respondents evaluated the ethical acceptability of 16 business decisions. Findings varied with the way in which the religion variable was measured. Little relationship between religious commitment and ethical judgment was found when responses were compared on the basis of broad faith categories – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other religions, and no religion. However, respondents who indicated that religious interests were of high or moderate importance to them demonstrated a higher level of ethical judgment (less accepting of unethical decisions) than others in their evaluations. Evangelical Christians also showed a higher level of ethical judgment.     

Experiencing Buddhism in Chinese Hotels: Toward the Construction of a Religious Lodging Experience

With the increasing number of religious people and the increasing mobility of human beings, traveling to religious attractions or for religious needs has become common. Although some discussions on religious tourism have been initiated, no discussions exist regarding the lodging needs of religiously motivated travelers. Derived from the concept of service quality, predictive customer expectation is considered effective in past literature but is deemed out-of-date because of the changing customer profile in the marketplace. This study aims to develop a measurement scale for the normative expectations of religiously motivated travelers. By integrating interviews, panel experts, and survey, this study derives a reliable and valid measure for normative expectations toward Buddhism-themed hotels.     

Distance,Language, Religion,and the Law of One Price: Evidence from Canada and Nigeria

We examine the impact of physical distance, language, and religion on Law of One Price (LOP) deviations across interwar Canadian and modern Nigerian cities. The data comprise monthly average retail prices for narrowly defined goods collected by national statistical agencies. We find that differences in the fraction of the city population sharing a common language and religion have a significant impact on LOP deviations. The impact of language differences is consistent with a recently developed theory in which both trade costs and differences in signal–noise ratios contribute to LOP deviations.     

对应原理：科学与宗教关系的重构

玻尔的对应原理在经典力学和量子力学之间建构起了一种独特的对应性．这一物理学原理为重构科学和宗教的关系提供了一种启发式的形式类比。这种类比体现在玻尔的对应原理所蕴涵的经典力学和量子力学的矛盾性、并行性、互助性、相通性同科学和宗教的冲突、自主、对话、整合的一种对应。依照这种对应，便可确立起科学和宗教之间的对应原理。科学和宗教的对应原理整合了关于科学和宗教关系的传统划分，从而深化了科学和宗教的关系认识。     

God as a Managerial Stakeholder?

Can or should God be considered a managerial stakeholder? While at first glance such a proposition might seem beyond the norms of stakeholder management theory or traditional management practice, further investigation suggests that there might be both theoretical and practical support for such a notion. This paper will make the argument that God both is and should be considered a managerial stakeholder for those businesspeople and business firms that accept that God exists and can affect the world. In doing so, part one of the paper first discusses the growth of religion and spirituality within the business and academic communities. Part two raises several arguments based on stakeholder theory and business reality to support the notion of God as a managerial stakeholder. Part three addresses the arguments against God as a managerial stakeholder. Part four discusses the managerial implications of considering God as a managerial stakeholder. The paper concludes with its limitations.     

Predicting Customer Satisfaction from ATMs: A Cross Country Study

ABSTRACT

In recent years, churches and religious organizations have come to recognize they are involved in marketing activities. A review of the religion journals found 17 articles on marketing issues published since 1976. Reasons for religious organization resistance, as well as gradual acceptance of marketing, are discussed. Opportunities for future research are considered.     

Family,religion and economic performance: A critique of cultural determinism

Arguing that some attitudes that may constitute an obstacle to the development process are culturally funded, cultural determinism pleads that underdevelopment is essentially generated endogenously, in other words, that people in developing countries, with their beliefs and their attitudes, are the more liable for the poverty in which they live. The simplicity of these arguments has seduced a large number of scholars but what seems to be a cultural brake on economic development could be explained otherwise. This critique of cultural determinism's arguments attempts to supply an alternative version of the interaction of culture and development, from which power, class, domination and the international division of labour will not be excised. In order to simplify this study only two of the cultural features most often referred to will be brought into focus: religion and family and patterns of kinship.     

The Many Dimensions of Gender Equality and Their Impact on Economic Growth

This study explores the multidimensional nature of gender equality and its influence on economic growth across 64 countries from 2000–2011 using an endogenous growth model. After controlling for standard growth correlates, the empirical results show that countries that protect the economic rights of women experience higher real GDP per capita growth rates. Furthermore, after controlling for a country’s religious affiliation, the importance of religion to the lives of people living in a country had a negative influence on economic growth. Intensely held religious beliefs are strongly correlated with gender inequitable views. These attitudes might serve as an important channel through which these gender biases are institutionalized in economic practices and act to slow economic growth.     

Religion and the sociological critique of political economy: Altruism and gift

Abstract

This article shows that there is a strong connection between the religious component of French sociology and the critique of political economy. In the first section, I consider how selfish behaviour, or egoism, became treated as a major threat endangering the creation of industrial society by those concerned about the diffusion of political economy. I then summarise the methodological critique set forth in the Cours, before connecting this critique to the economic content of the Système and the concept of altruism. In the following section, Spencer's view of altruism is contrasted to that held by Comte, and then I consider the reaction of French political economists, defending the moral value bought about by their science. In the final section, I explain how the Comtean approach was re-enacted by Durkheim and then by Mauss, at the head of the “sociology of religion” section of L'Année sociologique, the Durkheimian journal, to give birth to the theory of gift-giving behaviour that Mauss used to critique political economy in the 1920s.