Monastic Approach to Governance and Leadership: A Literature Review

Abstract

The financial crisis and recent cases of inflated manager compensation, corruption and falsified financial statements have shown clearly that actual corporate governance practice is not able to prevent the abuse of power, manipulation of incentives and excessive risk taking. This fact reveals the need to look at these issues from a different point of view. Having established basic governance instruments very early, monasteries were able to survive over centuries and had an essential impact on the development of the economy in Europe. A 1,500 year history of the Regula Benedicti and a wide variety of Benedictine organizations illustrate the relevance of the Regula Benedicti to many types of organizations. A considerable part of the Regula Benedicti is devoted to leadership issues. Consequently, it offers a useful time-tested model for organizational development and re-instilling ethical leadership. In this paper we conduct a content and citation analysis of 34 articles that deal with governance and leadership from a monastic perspective. Our study provides a better understanding of monastic organizations, describes the development of an alternative approach to governance and leadership in the last 20 years and gives a brief summary of the most important findings and intellectual contributions to this field. Besides, it raises awareness of the international audience for this topic and can serve as a facilitating tool to enter this emerging research field. Finally, we reveal existing research gaps and present promising areas for future advances in knowledge.