CST and good companies
Religion & Liberty Online

CST and good companies

The John A. Ryan Institute at the University of St. Thomas has been organizing a series of international conferences on Catholic Social Thought and Management Education. The latest was on the topic “The Good Company: Catholic Social Thought and Corporate Social Responsibility in Dialogue.” You can access a number of the papers through this site.

These conferences are usually a mixed bag, so investigate at your own risk. But there are always a few outstanding presentations and this edition is no exception. Albino Barrera offers a fine, concise treatment of the application of Catholic social teaching to the issue of outsourcing. My only question is whether the phrase “race to the bottom” is an accurate description of what happens in some cases. But I can agree with Barrera’s conclusion, which includes a caveat: “A race to the bottom, if true, is not permissible in CST’s vision of a properly functioning economy” (emphasis added).”

Kevin Schmiesing

Kevin Schmiesing, Ph.D., is a research fellow for the research department at the Acton Institute. He is a frequent writer on Catholic social thought and economics, is the author of American Catholic Intellectuals, 1895-1955 (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002) and is most recently the author of Within the Market Strife: American Catholic Economic Thought from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II (Lexington Books, 2004). Dr. Schmiesing holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in history from Franciscan University ofSteubenville. Author of Within the Market Strife and American Catholic Intellectuals, 1895—1955 (2002), he serves as Book Review Editor for the Journal of Markets & Morality. He is also executive director of CatholicHistory.net.