Spiritual Capital

Spiritual Capital

by Danah Zohar, Ian Marshall
Released April 2004
Publisher(s): Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 9781605097183

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

Our capitalist culture and the business practices that operate within it are in crisis. Capitalism as we know it today—an amoral culture of short-term self-interest, profit maximization, emphasis on shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and profligate disregard of long-term consequences—is an unsustainable system, a monster set to consume itself.

Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall argue that a critical mass of individuals acting from higher motivations can make a difference. They offer a radically new philosophy for corporate governance that alters the meaning and purpose of business and wealth creation. They describe a values-based business culture that focuses on the accumulation of “spiritual capital” rather than material capital. Rather than strictly benefiting shareholders, spiritual capital benefits all stakeholders—including the whole human race, present and future, and the planet itself. Spiritual capital nourishes and sustains the human spirit.

Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall introduce the concept of spiritual intelligence (SQ), and describe how it can be used to shift individuals and our culture from a state of acting from lower motivations (fear, greed, anger, and self-assertion) to one of acting from higher motivations (exploration, cooperation, power-within, mastery, and higher service). They show how this shift actually happens in a given organizational culture. They look in depth at the issues that dominate corporate culture and examine the role of the leadership elite who must be the ones to bring about and embody this cultural shift. Finally, Zohar and Marshall argue that spiritual capital is a valid and workable form of capitalism and detail what we, as individuals, can do to make it happen.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Preface
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Introduction Changing Ourselves to Change the World
  7. 1 The Monster That Consumes Itself
    1. How It Is Now
    2. A Still Deeper Nonsustainability
    3. Another Way?
  8. 2 What Is Spiritual Capital?
    1. Merck’s Story
    2. Expanding Our Notion of Capital
    3. What I Mean by Spiritual
    4. The Bottom Line: Why It’s Good to Be Good
    5. Three Levels of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
    6. The Wealth We Build by Building Ourselves
  9. 3 The Motivations That Drive Us
    1. The Scale of Motivations
  10. 4 Applying the Motivational Scale
    1. Familiar Motivations
    2. Advanced Motivations
    3. Shifting Our Motivations
  11. 5 SQ—Spiritual Intelligence
    1. Three Kinds of Intelligence
    2. SQ: Our Paradigm-Making and Paradigm-Breaking Intelligence
    3. The Scientific Evidence for SQ
    4. A Field of Shared Meaning
    5. What Became of Mats
  12. 6 The Twelve Principles of Transformation
  13. 7 Applying the Principles of Transformation
    1. Self-Awareness
    2. Spontaneity
    3. Vision and Value Led
    4. Holism
    5. Compassion
    6. Celebrate Diversity
    7. Field Independence
    8. Asking Why?
    9. Reframing
    10. The Positive Use of Adversity
    11. Humility
    12. A Sense of Vocation
    13. A Psychometric Instrument?
  14. 8 How Shift Happens
    1. The Role of Crisis
    2. Further Dynamics of Shift
    3. The Right Conditions for Shift
    4. Five Steps to Shift
  15. 9 Shifting Corporate Culture
    1. Behavioral Indicators of Shift
    2. Eight Issues That Focus Organizational Culture
    3. Indicators of Shift to a Culture That Fosters High SQ
  16. 10 A New Knights Templar?
    1. The Making of a Knight
    2. The Qualities of a Knight
    3. The Credo of a Knight
    4. Knights and Masters
    5. How Many Knights Are Needed?
  17. 11 Is It Still Capitalism?
    1. Dynamics of a Human Complex Adaptive System
    2. The Phase Change of Early Capitalism
    3. What Can “I” Do?
  18. Notes
  19. Bibliography
  20. Index
  21. About the Authors
  22. Berrett Koehler Publishers

Product information

  • Title: Spiritual Capital
  • Author(s): Danah Zohar, Ian Marshall
  • Release date: April 2004
  • Publisher(s): Berrett-Koehler Publishers
  • ISBN: 9781605097183