Māori Perspectives on Conscious Capitalism

Māori, the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand, were formerly colonised by the British from 1840 following the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi). Māori remain numerically significant in New Zealand and are the second largest ethnic group after Pākehā (New Zealand Europeans). Pre-colonial, traditional Māori society, through collective economic practice, was balanced to protect whakapapa (geological relationships) and natural resources. This balance was key to survival, and cultural practices evolved to maintain this balance. Despite the ongoing impacts of colonisation since the 1800s, Māori have maintained strong cultural values, which manifest in contemporary approaches to business that strive to balance the interests of future and past generations based on a spiritual connection to the natural world. Conscious capitalism, as envisioned by Mackey and Sisodia (2014), describes higher-order principles that align with Māori approaches to business, but their limitation is articulating the role of spirituality in entrepreneurial activity. This chapter extends Mackey and Sisodia’s higher-order tenets drawing on Māori values, primarily, mana (a supernatural force for status in a person, place, or object) and hau (the practice of reciprocal relations) to articulate how spiritual and cultural values shape contemporary Māori business endeavours. To illustrate, we offer a case study of a Māori business, led by one of the authors, which is grappling with tensions between cultural and commercial imperatives.