The IECO’s Director spoke about moral and spiritual motivation in the workplace at the 21st International Conference of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Manuel Guillén, IECO Director and Tenured Professor at the University of Valencia, was invited by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross to give a talk entitled “Vindicating better human motivation theories for personal flourishing in organizations”. The talk was given on February 24, 2014 in Rome at the Personal Flourishing in Organizations 21st International Conference hosted by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. The event brought together more than one hundred European and American scholars to discuss the ways in which business organizations can foster the personal development of their employees and managers.
In his talk, Professor Guillén presented the IECO Human Motivation Matrix. This table summarizes the classical theories of human motivation and expands the possibilities of human behavior, a key factor in the potential flourishing of any individual.
By classifying these theories according to the thinking of Aristotle and Professor Pérez López, Professor Guillén discovered a reasonable deployment of the moral motivations that had been forgotten when explaining human behavior. Likewise, the move towards religious motivations became natural following the composition logic of the IECO Matrix. The end result is a more complete map of the motivations that can drive personal behavior. The presentation aroused great interest among those attending the event.
Professor Guillén’s talk was given in the same month that the Journal of Business Ethics published the paper “The Neglected Ethical and Spiritual Motivations in the Workplace” which he coauthored with Ignacio Ferrero, from the University of Navarre, and Michael Hoffman, from Bentley University. In their paper, the authors set out in detail the process of forming the IECO Matrix of human motivations.
The Personal Flourishing in Organizations Conference also featured talks by Luis Manuel Calleja, from IESE Business School, Andrew Abella, from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and Federica Bergamino, Robert Gahl and José Andrés Mercado, all from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.
