Quakers, Business and Corporate Responsibility

Book excerpt: This book explores how the distinctive "Quaker" approach to responsible business is based on honesty, truth and integrity. It analyzes how networks, family and succession are at its heart, and how much this approach offers to current debates on corporate social responsibility, as well as to managers and practitioners in an increasingly complex business world. The contributions in this volume assess the factors that explain the success and prosperity of many Quaker businesses throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, discussing the lessons learned from their disappearance from prominence. By drawing upon examples that illustrate the Quaker ethic, it also considers what so-called “Quakernomics” can contribute to contemporary responsible business theory and practice.