Neoliberalism, Management and Religion

1Introduction

In the title of this study is used the somewhat pretentious phrase, the spirit of capitalism. What is to be understood by it?

Max Weber (1930[2001]:13), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (© Max Weber. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear)

For a number of years I have been researching and writing on matters of ethics as they relate to our organisational, and organised, lives. More recently this has taken me in the direction of thinking about the formative effects of religious and early philosophical discourse on ethical sensibility and subjectivity. And this has led to the book you have here, an examination of how religious concepts and ideas—the ‘spirits’ of this book’s title—haunt, are summoned ...