Laszlo Zsolnai’s paper “Materialistic versus Nonmaterialistic Value-orientation in Management” was published in the book Knut J. Ims and Lars Jacob Tynes Pedersen (Eds.): „Business and the Greater Good. Rethinking Business Ethics in an Age of Crisis” (2015 Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA, USA, pp. 107–116).
In the paper Zsolnai argues that the basic assumptions of business management became questionable because materialistic management uses money-driven extrinsic motivation and measures success by the generated profit or cash-flow. He suggests that non-materialistic management is more promising beause it gives priority to intrinsic motivation over extrinsic one, is orientated toward the common good, and
measures success in multi-dimensional, holistic terms.
Zsolnai revails the great paradox that materialistic value orientation destroys material values, including nature. To save material values we need to follow a non-materialistic (i.e. spiritual) path.