Servant Leadership, Social Entrepreneurship and the Will to Serve

Luk Bouckaert is Professor Emeritus of Ethics at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He is the founder of the Belgian and European SPES-Forum vzw.

Steven C. van den Heuvel is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, Belgium, as well as an Extraordinary Researcher in the Faculty of Theology at North-West University, South Africa.

This book brings together a number of important essays on the intersection of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship, examining them through a shared focus on 'the will to serve'. This combination bears out the insight that inspiring social and economic leaders are able to transform a conflictual human settlement into a collaborative and caring human community. The book seeks to answer the question of whether we can induce from their 'way of doing things' a model of civic entrepreneurship and leadership that can inspire people in profit, non-profit and public organizations. It also examines the extent to which the will to serve is compatible with the will to maximize profit or the will to gain economic, political or religious power. Furthermore, it asks how far different spiritual traditions create different models and examples of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship. This book will be of interest to researchers working in the fields of business ethics, business spirituality and corporate social responsibility.

Chapter 1:  The Will to Serve: An Anthropological and Spiritual Foundation for Leadership.- Chapter 2: Reading Exodus 18 and Robert Greenleaf.- Chapter 3: Servant Leadership Beyond Servant and Leader: A Buddhist Perspective on the Theory and Practice of Servant Leadership.- Chapter 4: Ipseistic Ethics Beyond Moralism: Rooting the "Will to Serve" In "The Reverence for Life".- Chapter 5: Simone Weil and a Critical Will to Serve.-Chapter 6: The Dark Side of Servant Leadership: Power Abuse via Serving.- Chapter 7: Christianity and Servant Leadership.- Chapter 8: Protecting the Weak and Creating Community.- Chapter 9: Foundations for Social Entrepreneurship: An Integrative Indian Perspective.- Chapter 10: Workplace Spirituality in Social Entrepreneurship: Motivation for Serving the Common Good.- Chapter 11: Mindful Servant Leadership for B-Corps.- Chapter 12: The Religious Leader as Social Entrepreneur.- Chapter 13: Serving the Poor: The Case of the EoCEnterprise 'Mercurio Net'.- Chapter 14: Servant Leadership in Market-Oriented Organizations, does that Make Sense? An Evaluation from an Economic-Organization Theory Perspective.- Chapter 15: The Importance of Calling in Realization of Life Projects: The Case of Maverick and Serial-entrepreneur Hans Nielsen Hauge with Implications for Business Education.- Chapter 16: Rethinking Fashion Retail: The Case of MrSale.- Chapter 17: Aldous Huxley's Anarchist Entrepreneurship Based on Spiritual Capital.- Chapter 18: John Wesley: Prophet and Entrepreneur.