Monastic Governance: Forgotten Prospects for Public Institutions

Abstract

To overcome agency problems, public sector reforms started to introduce businesslike incentive structures to motivate public officials. By neglecting internal behavioral incentives, however, these reforms often do not reach their stated goals. Our research analyzes the governance structure of Benedictine monasteries in order to gain new insights into solving agency problems in public institutions. A comparison is useful because members of both organizational forms, public organizations and monasteries, see themselves as responsible participants in their community and claim to serve the public good. We study monastic governance from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and German-speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years, and only a quarter of them broke up because of agency problems. We argue that they were able to survive for centuries due to an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and internal control mechanisms. This governance approach differs in several aspects from current public sector reforms. To overcome agency problems, public sector reforms started to introduce businesslike incentive structures to motivate public officials. By neglecting internal behavioral incentives, however, these reforms often do not reach their stated goals. Our research analyzes the governance structure of Benedictine monasteries in order to gain new insights into solving agency problems in public institutions. A comparison is useful because members of both organizational forms, public organizations and monasteries, see themselves as responsible participants in their community and claim to serve the public good. We study monastic governance from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and German-speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years, and only a quarter of them broke up because of agency problems. We argue that they were able to survive for centuries due to an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and internal control mechanisms. This governance approach differs in several aspects from current public sector reforms. AbstractTo overcome agency problems, public sector reforms started to introduce businesslike incentive structures to motivate public officials. By neglecting internal behavioral incentives, however, these reforms often do not reach their stated goals. Our research analyzes the governance structure of Benedictine monasteries in order to gain new insights into solving agency problems in public institutions. A comparison is useful because members of both organizational forms, public organizations and monasteries, see themselves as responsible participants in their community and claim to serve the public good. We study monastic governance from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and German-speaking Switzerland have an averag...

Is there a Relation Between Ecological Practices and Spirituality? The Case of Benedictine Monasteries

“…However, to get a better understanding of the systemic nature of sustainability in a contained religious community like monasteries, there is need for more information between spirituality and real-life issues such as food procurement, economic viability, living situations, etc. While social scientists have studied religion in the context of modern societies and their respective challenges (Barz and Luckmann 1992;Douglas 2009;Gabriel and Reuter 2004;Knoblauch 1999;Krech 1999;Luhmann 2002;Turner 2011), monasteries, which can be seen as unique religious living communities, have been studied rather infrequently (e.g., Inauen and Frey 2008;Inauen et al 2012;Inauen et al 2010a, b;Rost et al 2010). There have been even fewer studies of monasteries in the context of sustainability (Carroll 2012;Feldbauer-Durstmüller et al 2012;Tredget 2002).…”

How a multiple orientation of control reduces governance failures: a focus on monastic auditing

“…Second, our focus is not on monastic governance systems as a whole (see Inauen et al 2010aInauen et al , 2010b, but on one specific audit instrument -the monastic visitation. The latter is interesting because it combines different forms of control in one procedure.…”

“…McGrath (2007) investigated knowledge management in monastic communities of the medieval Irish Celtic church, which depended strongly on governance structures. Further, Inauen et al (2010a;2010b) and Rost et al (2010) comprehensively studied the Benedictines' governance structures, which are considered an essential factor in the longevity of these organizations. The aforementioned authors depict mainly the modes of action of the internal control mechanisms such as careful selection and socialization of novices or participation rights of the members.…”

“…Third, one needs to account for the particular characteristics of religious orders. Certainly we do not propagate a one-to-one transfer of monastic governance instruments (for a detailed discussion, see Inauen et al 2010a). Circumstances vary too widely, and an implementation depends on, for instance, the form, purpose, size, situation or context of an organization (Alford and Hughes 2008).…”

World Social Science Report 2013

“…BBC News (2010) Omindvar, K. and Y. Khosravi (2012) religion, spirituality and ethics have received increasing attention from researchers all over the world, since many sustainability processes seem to have failed because of a lack of appropriate ethics (Inauen et al, 2010;McDaniel, 2002;Orr, 2002). 2 For this reason, this research project studied the role of ethical principles transmitted through the Christian faith in promoting sustainable practices.…”