New Book Tackles The Business Of Faith

In a world wracked with uncertainty faith has taken centre stage, even among those who might have previously spurned belief in a higher power.

How, then, can businesses respond in a way that braids together the seemingly disparate strands of faith, management and a healthy bottom line?

A new book, Reimagining Faith and Management (Routledge 2021), sets out a business model that shows organisations how to balance a growing reliance on faith among their employees with the imperative of fiscal responsibility.

Edwina Pio, AUT Professor of Management and New Zealand’s first Professor of Diversity, has co-authored the book with Robert Kilpatrick and Timothy Pratt.

The new work suggests that historically, there has been a tension between individual faith (belief in a higher power) and corporate fiscal responsibility.

Against today’s backdrop of pandemic driven unknowns, however, the need to marry these two seemingly disparate systems is greater than ever.

Professor Pio says businesses and organisations that acknowledge a multiplicity of faiths arguably boast a more supportive culture and, therefore, a more economically sound position from which to operate.

“Restoring the soul of business in a fractured world is key to our future forward strategy and underpins the reason behind our book. We examine why it is time to integrate faith and management into the policies and practices of mainstream of businesses, and we propose a new model for ensuring organisations are economically and interculturally sustainable, inclusive, and viable,” says Professor Pio.

Faith and Management will be launched this evening from 6-8pm at AUT’s City Campus (WG308).

About Edwina Pio: Recipient of a Royal Society medal, Fulbright alumna, Edwina Pio is New Zealand’s first Professor of Diversity, and University Director of Diversity at AUT. Her research encompasses the intersections of work, ethnicity, indigenous studies, religion, and pedagogy. A thought leader, recipient of a Duke of Edinburgh Fellowship, trustee of the national Religious Diversity Centre, widely travelled and published, she is known for her praxis in action and rationally compassionate work on diversity and inclusion in a pluri-ethnic, pluri-religious, volatile world. Besides numerous journal articles, her published works include Sari Indian women at work in New Zealand released by Sir John Key, and Longing & Belonging, Caste away – unfolding the Maori Indian, and Work & Worship. Many aspects of Edwina’s life-worlds have been structured by the complexity of being a scholar of colour and a passionately engaged multi-faith ethnic minority migrant woman educator.

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