TOUCHY-FEEBLY THE HUNGRY SPIRIT Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World By Charles Handy Broadway 267pp $25 You've got to give Charles Handy credit for not shying away from the big questions. ''Can capitalism be made more decent and its instrument, business, work more obviously for the good of all, everywhere?'' the well-known British management writer asks early on in The Hungry Spirit. That's certainly food for thought. Unfortunately, despite an eloquent discussion of the limits of modern capitalism, the appetites of most readers won't be sated by what Handy's serving. Although Handy's book is being pitched as a quasi-spiritual tome, it's a spiritualism curiously short on religiosity--more New Age than New Testament. Yet there's not an angel in sight. Instead, the reader is fed myriad references to the writings of big thinkers through the ages and plenty of Handy-crafted, touchy-feely jargon. His Proper Selfishness, for example, means accepting ''responsibility for making the most of oneself by, ultimately, finding a purpose beyond and bigger than oneself.'' The book's title refers to the spiritual hunger that, Handy argues, both people and corporations have for this larger sense of meaning. The author's central icon is the white stone--an image drawn from the New Testament book of Revelation. Upon this stone is written a name known only to the one who receives it. Handy likens our lives to a tortuous path of self-discovery, ''steps on the way to the white stone.'' Unfortunately, Handy seems to think that getting there requires that you turn your back on most accepted economic thought. To hear him tell it, downsizing is bad, efficiency is bad; some protected markets are good, overstaffing is good. I think it's safe to say Milton Friedman's photo does not hang over Handy's desk. What's most surprising, coming from a former oil-company exec who makes his living writing and teaching about corporate management, is Handy's impassioned dismissal of traditional corporate ownership, one of the pillars of capitalism. He calls for an end to the management tenet that holds stockholders primary. Instead, he advocates turning today's increasingly stateless corporations into ''Citizen Companies'' wherein citizenship is granted to employees, customers, even to the communities in which a business operates--and to only a select few investors who demonstrate that they are true investors, not speculators. Another idea, meant to ensure that ''the business is going to be more than the property of its financiers'': a rise in the number of companies that issue A and B shares--a scheme that would give most shareholders minimal voting power. The elitism of that suggestion aside, it's naive to think that current shareholders would hand over control of their investments. Indeed, Handy seems to take stakeholder capitalism to an extreme--particularly in a day when even Britain's Labour Party seems reconciled to the capitalist game. But Handy seems to be calling for a totally new game: Out with numbers-scored efficiency and in with people-centered ''effectiveness,'' a suggestion that makes for questionable economics. Indeed, if Handy's recipes are followed, more than our spirits could go hungry. BY JAMES E. ELLIS RELATED ITEMS PHOTO: Cover, ``Hungry Spirit'' Return to top of story

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