Entrepreneurship And Religion

'I wish this book had been around when I tried to teach about entrepreneurship in its social context, life would have been much easier with these informed sources.' - Alistair R. Anderson, Aberdeen Business School, UK

In recent years, a number of scholars trained in the area of economics have begun to pay attention to a fascinating and increasingly important question: Does the interrelationship between religion and enterprise shape entrepreneurial decision making? Though religious groups can provide additional means for the generation of social capital, especially where ethnicity is strongly associated with specific religious adherence, it has been largely absent in economic discussions. Understanding the Relationship Between Religion and Entrepreneurship is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of religious theology on entrepreneurial decision making. While highlighting topics including women in business, religious marketing, and consumer behavior, this book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, theologists, business managers, policymakers, researchers, industry professionals, academician, and students seeking current research on the economic impacts of religious beliefs and practices.

"I'm excited about Faith Driven Entrepreneur. Anyone who is following the example of their creator God can find echoes of their work in this book." --Lecrae Entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey. But it doesn't need to be. God has a purpose and a plan for all those entrepreneurial dreams and creative gifts he gave you. The work you do today--the company you've built, the employees you work with, the customers you serve, the shareholders you report to, all of it--serves as an active part of what God wants to accomplish on earth. You are not alone in this journey. Join other faith-driven entrepreneurs as, together, we identify the values, habits, and traits that empower us to successfully build businesses, serve our communities, and faithfully pursue a loving relationship with God; read stories that exemplify how those values, habits, and traits unfold in everyday life; and discover the potential God wants to unleash through our work. Each book purchase includes access to the eight-session Faith Driven Entrepreneur video series, a discussion guide to encourage conversation among peers, and an invitation to join a Faith Driven Entrepreneur Group to meet other like-minded entrepreneurs.

This volume elucidates both the diverse texts of the New Testament as well as the larger Jewish, Greek, and Roman worlds in which they were produced. It contains sections with various papers on the "Jewish Background of the New Testament," "Greco-Roman Background of the New Testament," "Jesus and the Gospels," "The Apostle Paul," "Hebrews, the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation," "New Testament Issues and Contexts," "The Text of the New Testament," and "After the New Testament." The volume therefore ranges from the law of Moses and intertestamental period to the First Jewish Revolt of AD 66-73 and the canonization of the New Testament.

This accessible textbook provides a comprehensive guide to the building blocks of sustainable social enterprise, exploring how core elements contribute to either the success or failure of the social venture. It analyzes the key skills needed to synthesize effective business practices with effective social innovation and points out both what works and what does not. Taking a practical approach, it demonstrates how big ideas can be transformed into entities that produce lasting change.

"Volume 1: This volume is the culmination of many discussions among the editors over the years, especially at the Sustainability, Ethics and Entrepreneurship (SEE) Conference, related to the growth and institutionalization of environmental and social entrepreneurship. Research on these two forms of entrepreneurial action has tried to keep pace with what is occurring in the field. While the research is diverse, attracting scholars across many disciplines and from all parts of the world, it is still in the formative stages. This volume seeks to take stock of the literature and report the state of the art in environmental and social entrepreneurship. In particular, it seeks to explore new theoretical directions that blend traditional notions of economic efficiency and social welfare and new ways of measuring and empirically testing these phenomena. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the diverse philosophical, methodological, and theoretical techniques to studying these forms of entrepreneurship. We expect this volume will contribute to this burgeoning research and that researchers will engage in theory development for the foreseeable future, as new business models are developed, tested, abandoned, and evolved. Volume 2: This volume spotlights cutting-edge research, innovative methodologies, and provocative thinking by organizational scholars and leaders committed to advancing the global sustainability agenda. Each chapter focuses on advancing one or more United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The chapter sequence follows a general logic of SDG numerical order and breadth. Overall, this compendium provides critical insights, practical strategies and tools, and timely inspiration to motivate individual and collective engagement with and achievement of the SDGs. With a decade remaining to achieve the 2030 Agenda, this volume supports sustainable development globally, through: identification of key challenges; theoretical, empirical, and practical exploration of potential solutions; and sharing of actionable findings. Each chapter makes an impactful contribution by spotlighting opportunities for advancing best-in-class efforts toward the achievement of the SDGs. Chapters represent diverse scholarly perspectives and include a representative range of focal SDGs, organizational contexts, applications, and initiatives from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, and spanning national borders. Volume 3: Historically religious institutions have been at the forefront of social change, yet religion and spirituality are rarely discussed in contemporary entrepreneurship research. We challenge this oversight and argue that by ignoring the fundamental principles that define an overwhelming majority of people all over the world, our scholarship risks being partial, incomplete and thus misleading. This volume presents a selection of entrepreneurship perspectives - studies, essays and analyses - that integrate religion and spirituality with social change. We have deliberately sought chapters that are edgy and novel, to give different nuances on this integration of religion and spirituality with entrepreneurship for social change"--

'I wish this book had been around when I tried to teach about entrepreneurship in its social context; life would have been much easier with these informed sources.' – Alistair R. Anderson, Aberdeen Business School, UK This rich and detailed book makes a very timely contribution to extending our understanding of entrepreneurship in its social context. Using selected examples, the respected contributors show how the values developed in religious beliefs and practices shape entrepreneurship. For too long the entrepreneur has been characterized as an isolated, economically driven individual, thus ignoring how enterprise and entrepreneurs are products of their society, their culture and their religion. This innovative book discusses both entrepreneurship and religion, as well as indicating how the synthesis of beliefs and practices combine in entrepreneurial endeavours. It provides a conceptually useful way of framing the individualistic entrepreneur in his or her social and cultural context, demonstrating how entrepreneurial agency operates within and through a variety of religious contexts. Illustrated with original photographs, this captivating book will be warmly welcomed by students and researchers with interests in entrepreneurship, sociology, religion and cultural studies. Government policy-makers in immigration will also find this book an invaluable read.

"The overall rate of incarceration in the United States has been on the rise since 1970s, skyrocketing during Ronald Reagan's presidency, and recently reaching unprecedented highs. Looking for innovative solutions to the crises produced by gigantic prison populations, Florida's Department of Corrections claims to have found a partial remedy in the form of faith and character-based correctional institutions (FCBIs). While claiming to be open to all religious traditions, FCBIs are almost always run by Protestants situated within the politics of the Christian right. The religious programming is typically run by the incarcerated along with volunteers from outside the prison. Stoddard takes the reader deep inside FCBIs, analyzing the subtle meanings and difficult choices with which the incarcerated, prison administrators, staff, and chaplains grapple every day. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research and historical analysis, Brad Stoddard argues that FCBIs build on and demonstrate the compatibility of conservative Christian politics and neoliberal economics"--

"Starting a new organization is risky business. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, most startups fail; half of them do not reach the five-year mark. Protestant churches are not immune to these trends. Most new churches are not established with denominational support-more than 50% are actually non-denominational-and, therefore, have many of the same vulnerabilities other infant organizations must overcome. Research on both congregants and congregations has shown that millions of Americans are leaving churches, half of all churches do not add any new members, and thousands of churches shutter their doors each year. These numbers suggest that American religion is not a growth industry. Yet, more than 1000 new churches are started in any given year. What are the forces that move people who might otherwise be satisfied working for churches to the more risky role of starting one as a religion entrepreneur? In Church Planters, sociologist Richard Pitt uses more than 125 in-depth interviews with church planters to understand their motivations. First, he uncovers themes in their sometimes miraculous, sometimes mundane answers to the question: "why take on these risks?" Then he examines how they approach three common entrepreneurial challenges-recognizing opportunities, marshalling resources, and framing success-in ways that reduce uncertainty and lead them to believe they will be successful. The book combines their evocative stories with insights from research on commercial and social entrepreneurship to explain how these religion entrepreneurs come to believe their organizational goals must be accomplished, that they are capable of being accomplished, and that they would accomplish them over time"--

Faith Entrepreneurs is designed to equip leaders who want to launch bold entrepreneurial initiatives of faith-based people to empower institutions that are compassionate, caring, and healing.Dr. Michael Keith Simms, a consultant who specializes in nonprofit management and entrepreneurship, presents his ideas for successful spiritually guided leadership by touching on the following topics: How the faith-entrepreneur enterprise operates Building a volunteer workforce The nonprofit platform Acquiring the skills of capacity building Going global Writing business and/or strategic plans And much more! For those wanting to live a life of faith through the application of religious principles in relation to social science concepts, Faith Entrepreneurs will equip them in launching an organization that is dedicated to helping others through God.