According to experts, the quality standards for strategic planning techniques can be summarized in the acronym 'FAROUT'. They must be future-oriented, accurate, resource-efficient, objective, useful, and timely. '' VOL. 33 NO. 2 2012 j JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j PAGE 13 '' In order for a resource or capability to be strategically beneficial it must be valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable. ''

Purpose -This paper aims to present Aquinas' psychological theory of action as a useful guide for understanding decision making in management. Design/methodology/approach -A conceptual reconstruction of Aquinas' views on the structure of the moral act is shown to apply to the process of decision making in management. Findings -Grounded in a rich rational psychology, Aquinas' theory of action allows for prescription that harmonizes instrumental rationality, the will, and personal morality. It captures contemporary approaches well and provides better explanations of management success and failure than do models of rational choice. Since the exercise of practical reason can be learned, the model is optimistic about the possibility of management development.Research limitations/implications -The paper stops at the conceptual level. The interplay between reason and will, or between deliberative and prescriptive stages in decision making, opens up a field of empirical research in management. Originality/value -Aquinas' virtue ethics has been applied to management, but this is the first suggestion to draw on his theory of action. If fully developed, it promises a radical alternative to models based on functional reasoning and utilitarian values.

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Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate advances a positive view of businesses that are hybrids between several traditional categories. He expects that the ''logic of gift'' that animates civil society infuses the market and the State with relations typical for it-reciprocity, gratuitousness, and solidarity. His theological rationale offers an answer to two questions that have largely remained open in the literature-why hybridization of business occurs and why it is desirable. A rational reconstruction of hybrid enterprise that goes beyond a simple taxonomy of types benefits from the Pope's call for an intrinsic integration of institutions and processes traditionally attributed to disparate spheres. The relational model of the Trinity defines the unity in diversity that accounts for the benefits of truly hybrid businesses, and the ''logic of gift'' serves as the agent of integration.

Caritas in Veritate , Catholic social thought, business ethics, economic efficiency, humanism in management, papal encyclicals,