Can We Take the Religion out of Religious Decision-Making? The Case of Quaker Business Method

In this paper, we explore the philosophical and theological issues that arise when a ‘religious’ process of decision-making, which is normally taken to require specific theological commitments both for its successful use and for its coherent explanation, is transferred into ‘secular’ contexts in which such theological commitments are not shared. Using the example of Quaker Business Method, we show how such a move provokes new theological questions, as well as questions for management studies

A cognitive science analysis of the Quaker Business Method: is how it works why it works?

The Quaker Business Method (QBM) has been in development for over 300 years. Quakers believe that the QBM is an effective means for making decisions. This paper develops a tripartite theoretical framework to analyze the QBM in order to examine its efficacy, both in terms of the quality of its processes and the morality of its decisions. The framework encompasses: (1) a decomposition of the QBM as a set of tools; (2) a selection of theories and models from cognitive science that explain how humans think; (3) a set of relational models that can be used to objectively judge the morality of different forms of human behavioural interactions. Overall, it appears that QBM tools may counter the deficits in natural human abilities to reason and solve problems, and that they may promote decision making practices that are moral and that the resulting decisions, themselves, may be moral