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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 15, 2008
Review of Business within Limits:
Deep Ecology and Buddhist Economics
Business within Limits: Deep Ecology and Buddhist Economics. Edited by Laszlo Zsolnai and Knut Johannesssen Ims. Bern: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006, 324 pages, ISBN 3039107038, US $62.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Jason McLeod Monson
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Glasgow jasonmonson@gmail.com
Business within Limits is the first volume of Frontiers of Business Ethics, a series edited by Laszlo Zsolnai that aims to promote a new ethical model for transforming business into humanistic, sustainable, and peaceful forms. Twelve scholars from four continents contributed the eleven papers, which explore the contributions of Deep Ecology and “Buddhist economics” to the transformation of business into more ecological and humanistic forms.
In 1973, E.F. Schumacher published Small is Beautiful, calling for a more humanistic economic system modeled after Buddhist economic principles. Over the past few decades, a growing number of mainstream economists have looked to Buddhist economics for an alternative to neo-classical economic models. This increased interest is in part due to Schumacher’s explication of Buddhist economic principles, which were largely unknown to Western economists at the time, but may also be attributed to the the high compatibility of Buddhist economic principles with the increasingly popular principles of sustainable development. Deep Ecology has also gained similar attention with the relatively recent rise of awareness of the effects that business has on the environment, and of the need for an economic model that accounts for these complex inter-dependent relationships. Business within Limits addresses these issues in a form that will likely appeal to organizational leaders and theorists interested in more sustainable forms of business and economics.
