The Humanist Management Network is “working on reconnecting the old humanistic traditions with the insights of the sciences to provide an alternative narrative for human organizing”.

Michael Pirson explains:

“The Humanist Management Network, of which I’m a founding partner, has been working on reconnecting the old humanistic traditions with the insights of the sciences to provide an alternative narrative for human organizing. The baseline of this group is that to counter the power of economism, you need to have a parsimonious (simple) assumption set of who we are as people and what we wish to organize for. We call it “protecting human dignity and promoting well-being.” This is not new at all, yet possibly quite relevant when examining alternative ways of organizing (which I would submit is the crux of many problems we are facing: poor organization).

I would argue that the notion of dignity as that which is intrinsically valuable can be helpful. Dignity escapes the exchange and market logics and therefore could be critical in the quest for organizing formats that complement/supersede the market.”

“We therefore do not get rid of assumptions, but think we can better defend those:

1) we are endowed with dignity, intrinsic value

2) we do care about us and each other (otherwise we would not have survived)

3) we ultimately wish to flourish/be happy

4) we therefore intuitively understand that treating others with dignity serves us all best (we still need to learn how: education is the humanist theory of change)

5) and we are in pain when we destroy our life-systems.”