Berthouzoz, Roger (2000).
Economic efficiency, ethical foundations and spiritual values in the management of organizations, in T.C. Pauchant and Associates, Ethics and spirituality at work. Under revision in the U.S.
In order to integrate ethical and spiritual values into management and the economy, the theologian, ethicist and Dominican priest, Roger Berthouzoz an expert in economical and developmental ethics , draws from a precise source, the sociological and systemic theory of Niklas Luhmann.
. Developing one of this book's recurrent theme, the necessity to accept a systemic perspective, he reminds us that the fall of Marxism should not lead to an idealization of neo-liberalism. For Roger Berthouzoz, these two ideologies fragment the real, the first by the omnipresence of the state, and the second by the omnipresence of the market. By proposing that every system develops its own rationality and its own practices which give rise to its identity, he rejects both a "corrective ethic" imposed from without, and a "utilitarian ethic" appropriated by the system. He suggests an "integrative ethic" which must be discussed cooperatively, by all the partners within each system in order to genuinely improve decision making. As well, he postulates that ethics, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, should be inspired from above by noble values (human dignity, justice, solidarity, spiritual development), and from below by operating practices (charters of responsibility, codes of ethics and management tools).
Certain of the theories introduced by Roger Berthouzoz in this erudite text are currently used in the most avant-garde scientific research in administration - the nature of complexity, systemic analysis, the theory of self-organization, the different forms of anthropological reality etc.. If this "adventure of the scientific spirit", as Simone Weil calls it (see chapter 12), seems disconcerting at first, it is necessary if we truly wish to humanise and spiritualise our managerial practice and economic system, along with ourselves and the world in general.
