Weird or What? Economics, Catholicism and Management

At the risk of killing interest in this post before anyone reads to the end of this paragraph, may I recommend a new book that contemplates not one, but two, sure-fire conversation-nobblers - religion and economics? It is by a chap called Edward Hadas, a stockbroker turned journalist who works for the online financial comment site breakingviews.com. OK, so it is all a trifle weird - as is the prospect I have of attending its launch party in a Catholic church. But the book is intriguing.

As a taster, consider these two observations. Economics, Hadas emphasises, is often considered to be a thing...some sort of inanimate science akin to physics or tectonics. But economics does not, and cannot exist, separate from humanity. Laws of physics and tectonics would exist irrespective of whether the world is populated with people. Not so economics: or trade, or inflation, or money. Without people all these concepts would disappear faster than you could say "endogenous growth theory."

Hadas also shines a piercing light on economists' inability to take account of activities which are clearly of economic (and human) benefit. The classic example is motherhood. Good mothers are enormously beneficial but the advantage created is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to measure. Since motherhood cannot be expressed as a number, it is too often ignored by policy makers.

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, has spent a sizable part of his career extolling the virtues of getting mothers into paid employment. (He was banging on again about his hopes for a better world at a Confederation of British Industry conference this morning. This is BBC online report of the speech.) There are good reasons why mothers might want to work,  and why their children might benefit; poverty, after all, lies at the root of so many problems. But there must at least be a risk that the benefit of unpaid motherhood is ignored because it is economically hard to define.

And what has all this to do with management? All good managers need a proper understanding of economics. Like economics, management is closely related to the human condition. Hard and fast rules do not exist, and trouble lies where attempts are made to invent or deploy them.  And like economics, management is not easily measured. Those who value only measurable management skills are, surely, missing something.

Human Goods, Economic Evils by Edward Hadas is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Buy the book, if you like, here.