CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW A JOURNAL BY THE CENTER FOR CHRISTIANITY IN BUSINESS AT HOUSTON BAPTIST UNIVERSITY
Focus On Ethics August 2013 God Leads in Mysterious Ways PHIL CLEMENTS
A Christian Ethic for Business ALEXANDER HILL
Worship in the Trenches BUCK JACOBS
The Fruit of the Spirit AL ERISMAN AND DENISE DANIELS
Ethical Leadership DORIS GOMEZ
CHRISTIAN BUSINESS ETHICS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE – CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES Excerpts from a panel discussion
Review of Christ and Business Culture KWOK TUNG CHEUNG
CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW ISSUE 2 AUGUST 2013 PUBLISHERS Robert Sloan Mohan Kuruvilla CO-EDITORS Ernest Liang Leslie Haugen CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Richard Martinez Wallace Henley Note to Readers The views expressed in the articles in this publication are solely the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Christian Business Review, Houston Baptist University (HBU), or the HBU School of Business.
IN THIS ISSUE 2 4
Letter from the Editors Living Cases
God Leads in Mysterious Ways
One person’s spiritual journey of discovery about purpose in life Phil Clements
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Book Excerpt
A Christian Ethic for Business
A practical framework for managing ethical challenges in business from a biblical worldview Alexander Hill
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Insights on Application
Worship in the Trenches
Lessons from cases of ethical dilemmas for the Christian business professional Buck Jacobs
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Feature Article
Christian Business Ethics in Theory and Practice – Cross-Cultural Perspectives Excerpts from a special panel discussion Buck Jacobs, Steeve Kay, Bill Mearse, Tao Zhang, Wallace Henley (moderator)
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The Fruit of the Spirit – Application to Performance Management How the biblical concept of the fruit of the Spirit can be a meaningful tool in structuring employee appraisals conducive to stronger ethical values Al Erisman and Denise Daniels
Ethical Leadership: An Invitation to Spiritual Formation and Transformation for the Christian Professional For the Christian, the spiritual temperament of the inner person defines a leader’s capacity to lead ethically as much as his/her outward technical competencies. Doris Gomez
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CBR PeerReviewed Articles
Book Review
Christ and Business Culture
By Kam-Hon Lee, Dennis McCann, and MaryAnn Ching Yuen (An empirical survey of Christian responses to ethical challenges in Hong Kong and China business, organized around stylized theological and negotiation typologies) Reviewed by Kwok Tung Cheung
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Guidelines for Contributors
The Christian Business Review, Issue 2. Copyright 2013 Houston Baptist University. All rights reserved by original authors except as noted. Submissions to this journal are welcome. Email us at cbr@hbu.edu. To learn about the Center for Christianity in Business, please visit www.hbu.edu/ccb.
CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW AUGUST 2013
from the editors FROM THE EDITORS
O
ur second annual issue of the Christian Business Review (CBR) takes up the critically important subject of ethics in business. This can be an unwieldy subject, since it encompasses examination of everything from high profile moral failures (e.g., Enron, Worldcom, Tyco International, HealthSouth, Bernard Madoff, Allen Stanford and Raj Rajarathnam, to name just a few) to more subtle challenges such as layoffs, compensation policy, and conflicts of interests. Rather than engaging ourselves in the endless debate of good and bad subjected to the shifting standards of cultural values, we as Christians must frame such debates according to God’s unchanging principles as laid down in His Word. The overarching objective of the presentations here is to elicit biblical principles to challenge, equip, and edify present and future business leaders, as genuine Christ followers, to integrate biblical values into their professional lives. This is the central mission of the sponsor of this journal, the Center for Christianity in Business (CCB). The collection of writings in this issue bears witness to the richness of godly wisdom in dealing with the everyday ethical dilemmas and challenges faced by Christian professionals in the world of modern commerce. The insights from scholars, the stories from business leaders, and the testimonies from those who have fought in the trenches give the readers practical knowledge to survive and triumph when they face ethical battles. We are confident that every reader will find something of imminent practical as well as spiritual value in these essays. In “God Leads in Mysterious Ways,” which opens the current issue, Phil Clements relates how his engagement with a ministry in Christian ethics training ensued from his decade-long search for why the Protestant Ethic (cf. Max Weber) would necessarily lead to “business done right.” It is also a fitting reminder for believers that knowledge of and obedience to God’s Word inevitably help align our life’s purpose with God’s plan. Taking a chapter out of Alec Hill’s classic work, Just Business, helps set the stage for a doctrinally sound and practically flexible framework for business ethics from a biblical worldview. Hill’s 3-legged stool illustration of an ethical paradigm – based on God’s essential traits of holiness, justice and love – offers a roadmap to overcome ethical challenges, in contradistinction to secular solutions that fall prey to human frailty and flawed institutions. This biblical perspective comes alive in the real life cases described by Buck Jacobs in “Worship in the Trenches.” Jacobs’ compilation and interpretation of these ethical dilemmas offer practical insights for Christian business leaders who often face similar difficulties in their pursuit of holiness in the complicated and competitive world of commerce. Two articles in the current volume inject distinct cultural perspectives into the discussion of business ethics. In “Christian Business Ethics in Theory and Practice: Cross-Cultural Perspectives,” business leaders from the U.S. and China reaffirm the culture-transcendent nature of biblical wisdom. And in his review of Christ and Business Culture, Kwok Tung Cheung describes how the results from a decade-long research program open unique windows into the ethical struggles of business leaders operating in China and Hong Kong. Finally, two original, peer-reviewed papers offer unique contributions to the integration of moral character development in management practice. In Erisman and Daniels’ “The Fruit of the Spirit: Application to Performance Management,” the authors discuss how the nine characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:21-22) can be a tool in performance appraisals to cultivate employee consciousness toward ethical values. From a sample of actual performance appraisal instruments, they found that patience and self-control were generally not assessed, two traits that are arguably related to ethical lapses. This could be of profound significance in corporate training and development efforts. In “Ethical Leadership: An Invitation to Spiritual Formation and Transformation for the Christian Professional,” Gomez posits that good leaders are marked by a deliberate focus on
CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW AUGUST 2013
from the editors
both outer competencies as well as inner character, on technical capabilities as well as on spiritual maturity. The author concludes that, “[l]eaders must make a courageous decision to diligently examine their hearts, in order to identify areas of needed change and growth.” It is only apt that we close this note as we did our inaugural issue with a thought from William MacDonald’s book of devotions, One Day at a Time. In this passage, he explains what it means to walk in the Spirit - not a complicated or impractical activity, or one that is “foreign to the world of aprons and overalls,” but rather a pursuit that is “mostly composed of faithfulness in one’s daily work.” MacDonald sums it up using a quote from Harold Wildish: “Give yourself up, morning by morning, to be led by the Holy Spirit and go forth praising and at rest, leaving Him to manage you and your day. Cultivate the habit all through the day, of joyfully depending upon and obeying Him, expecting Him to guide, to enlighten, to reprove, to teach, to use, and to do in and with you what He wills. Count upon His working as a fact, altogether apart from sight or feeling. Only let us believe in and obey the Holy Spirit as the Ruler of our lives, and cease from the burden of trying to manage ourselves; then shall the fruit of the spirit appear in us, as He wills, to the glory of God.” (William MacDonald, One Day at a Time, Gospel Folio Press (2007): 48)
In addition to fruitfulness, with such an attitude it is not hard to imagine that we could resolve many of the organizational challenges we face, including ethical dilemmas, and avoid many more. Ernest P. Liang, Ph.D. Leslie K Haugen, Ph.D. Co-Editors
CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW AUGUST 2013
GOD LEADS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS
CBR living case
Personal spiritual journeys of men and women in business
LIVING CASES GOD LEADS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS by Phil Clements
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GOD LEADS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS
Phil Clements is Managing Director at Cathedral Consulting Group, a management consultancy for private firms, and the founder of the Center for Christian Business Ethics Today, a marketplace training ministry focusing on Christian business ethics. Prior to 2005, Phil was Executive Vice President of Standard & Poor’s Corporate Value Consulting division, an acquisition from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) where Phil was the global practice leader. Author and editor of many books and adjunct professor at The King’s College and Rutgers, Phil is a CPA and holds a J.D. from the University of Puget Sound, a LLM from NYU, and a Master’s in Theological Studies from the Reformed Theological Seminary.
“Max Weber was right.”
So starts David Landes’ paper in the book Culture Matters.1 “Right about what?” I asked myself, and who was Max Weber anyway? So God, in His mysterious way, changed the course of my life. It was 2003. I was the Chairman of the National Bible Association. I was visiting one of the Association’s long-time and most faithful board members, John Templeton Jr., president of the Templeton Foundation. “Phil, you must read this book, ” as John handed me Culture Matters. Since John, better known as Jack, recommended the book, I spent the summer reading the book. For those of us of the business persuasion, reading a set of Ph.D. papers is just painful. But I managed to get through it. In my mind Culture Matters has a simple proposition: faith drives a country’s economy and the Protestant faith makes for the best economy. Interesting, but who cares, was my response. But there was more. Perhaps commerce had changed because of the Reformation. Answering the questions about Weber became compelling. I mentioned this to my wife, Julie. She giggled, because as an economics major at Hunter College, a New York City public college, she studied Max Weber’s theory on the implications of the Protestant Ethic. Going to our library, she handed me her book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber.2
Weber’s book is a long white paper written in 1904. Culture Matters is an anthology of current white papers published in 2000. That Weber’s work has survived 100 years and was right, is an interesting opening for Culture Matters. Right about what? Weber says that Reformation Protestantism changed the way commerce is done. His theory was that the Reformed Protestant believed that not only was he saved by faith, through God’s grace, but that God had elected him for salvation from the beginning. This means that the individual relates solely to God. In addition, because of this election, a Reformed Protestant was assured of salvation. To Weber, this assurance left the Reformed Protestant needing to prove his salvation and assurance by work and thrift. To me, the question was, “Was Weber right?” I have been a Christian since age seven. I grew up under the spiritual care of my grandparents, because my parents divorced when I was about five. In the 1950s a divorcee was shunned by the church. So my mother, a faithful Christian woman, was uncomfortable in the church setting. My grandparents were Pentecostal and regularly took us to “prayer meetings” and “revivals.” One evening at prayer meeting, I was kneeling by a sofa, praying in a kid’s way, and began to think about what this Christian faith was all about. In simple terms, it was clear then that I was a sinner and it made sense that I was not perfect as God was perfect, that God had sent Jesus to die for us in payment for our sins, and that I needed to invite Jesus into my life. So I did. I have been a Christian ever since. Throughout my career, God made many decisions easy by giving me only one choice. Often we struggle with where to work, should I seek another
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GOD LEADS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS position, what if I don’t like what I am doing, etc. But for me, my walk with God was at one point very casual and at another point very focused. I have always been comfortable that God has me right where He wants me. This has proven true because I never changed jobs for about thirty years, starting right out of law school. Fast forward to 2004 as I confronted this question of “Was Max Weber right?” I was faced with the conundrum of being a Christian for over forty years, working with major global enterprises and building businesses around the world as a senior partner of a Big Eight accounting firm, but had never heard of Weber’s proposition. How can this be? God reminded me that He had given me this question and kept prodding me to get an answer to whether Reformed Protestantism had changed commerce and the way business was done. Like other CPAs with a law degree, I tend to be very systematic in the approach to problem solving. To answer the Max Weber question, it was clear that I needed to understand Reformed theology, and not just in a cursory manner by taking some courses here and there. I searched and found Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and started their virtual program (RTSV) in the summer of 2004 to pursue a graduate degree in theology.
the answer to the Max Weber question. Max Weber was right, but for the wrong reason. The Reformation had indeed changed commerce as the world knows it. But protestants do not work hard and are not thrifty in order to prove their election and salvation. They do these because they have assurance, owing everything including their time and talents to God who has saved them. These individuals live for God now with the expectation of being with Him in eternity. Every effort and every business opportunity are for God’s glory. This completely different perspective at every level of business changed commerce as Weber identified, and such an orientation is only found in people who practice the assurance of heaven. What Weber identified and Landes affirmed has been a great gift to mankind. During the days of my professional practice, I dealt with clients who practiced integrity, whose ethics were fundamentally consistent with the Christian tradition. Practically all of them were honorable and ethical. But if that could be labeled a Christian era, then today we are truly in a post Christian era. It is this shift that causes me to worry that even Christians are at risk of forgetting the principles of doing business right. In discussing this problem with Peter Lillback, president of Westminster Theological Seminary, he
“For a Christian, every effort and every business opportunity are for God’s glory.” At the same time, the world was changing at Standard & Poor’s (S&P), where I was Executive Vice President of Corporate Value Consulting. S&P, a division of McGraw Hill, bought my unit in 2001 from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which needed to sell the unit because the Securities and Exchange Commission had adopted regulations making PwC’s Corporate Value Consulting practice, which I ran as part of my duties at PwC, no longer viable. I was able to get S&P to buy the business, keep all of the professionals and clients and make PwC a lot of money. In 2004 we had a new president at S&P and she apparently had other plans for the unit. By October, I was terminated. I had to call my oldest daughter, who was in another S&P division, to give her a heads-up. Her first comment was, “Looks like God wants you to go to seminary full time.” That was exactly what I did. I completed my Masters in Theological Studies degree at RTS in the Spring of 2006. It was just another example of God making a decision on where He wants me to be. Along with my ministry training I finally found
suggested a conference on this topic to see if there was any real interest in the broader Christian business community. In 2010, we co-hosted the first of such conferences on Christian business ethics in Philadelphia. To lay a foundation for what God might do going forward, I set up the Center for Christian Business Ethics Today, LLC (Center).3 The Center has hosted three conferences to-date, using several innovative structures to explore and educate the Christian community on “In God’s world, business done right is a blessing.” The conferences now focus on looking at each of the Ten Commandments (Decalogue) and their implications for the world of commerce. For the Christian in business today, the question is how he or she operates the business in a fashion that is consistent with God’s design for His world. The Decalogue presents a good framework for how God designed the world of business to operate, e.g., consistent treatment of all customers, honoring agreements, respect for another’s property including time, talent as well as treasure. The Center’s conferences and materials are designed to aid the business person in understand-
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GOD LEADS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS ing and applying these principles. From the conferences come series of papers that are published into books, which are now being translated into Korean and Portuguese as Christian communities across the world look to use them for their own edification. Being a Christian and a business person under God’s direction has been a wonderful personal experience. Over the years, God has blessed me with abun-
dance and fulfillment in careers, family and personal relationships. Why would the God of heaven and earth love me and give me these kinds of opportunities? The only response I have is this: I am thankful for His love, and I know that He does lead in mysterious ways to change our lives for His glory.
Notes 1 Lawrence E. Harrison & Samuel P. Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York, NY.: Basic Books, 2001). 2 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, NY: Scribner, 1930). 3 The Center for Christian Business Ethics Today (the Center) (www.cfcbe.com) was established in 2009 to address the need for application of traditional Christian principles to business operations. The Center focuses on the ethical issues arising in the details of operating a business. The Center does not assume a global understanding of right and wrong for every situation. Rather the Center believes ethics starts with a clear understanding of the standards of right and wrong, then applies these principles to the gray areas of global commerce.
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A Christian Ethic for Business
A CHRISTIAN ETHIC FOR BUSINESS by Alexander Hill
*Taken from Just Business by Alexander Hill, Chapter One: A Christian Ethic for Business. Copyright(c) 2008 by Alexander Hill. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426. http://www.vpress.com/cgiivpress/book.pl/code=2676
An ethical man is a Christian holding four aces. MARK TWAIN Man is too complicated. I would have made him simpler. FEODOR DOSTOYEVSKY You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. JESUS Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untried. G. K. CHESTERTON A Note from the Editors: In a world that is flooded by moral relativism the Christian business man or woman faces the constant challenge of doing the right thing in ethical dilemmas, which is no easy task. As Niccolo Machiavelli suggested in The Prince, “…a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.” Alec Hill’s Just Business distills the essence of ethics from the morass of tolerated practices in a fallen world, lighting up the path for the right thing in God’s eyes. Chapter One from Hill’s classic work, reprinted here, sets the right tone for the entire discussion in this issue of the Christian Business Review. We greatly appreciate InterVarsity Press and Alec Hill for giving us permission to reprint this material.
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aria manages a small division within a manufacturing corporation. Roughly 60 percent of the division’s annual $250,000 budget is allocated to the salaries and benefits of Maria and her three subordinates, Abe, Barb and Carl. Maria’s supervisor informs her that $40,000 to $50,000 needs to be cut from next year’s budget. Since non-personnel expenses constitute only $100,000 of the budget, Maria is inclined to lay off one of her employees. Before the company moved Abe to Seattle from Chicago last year, Maria told him over the phone that his employment would “no doubt be a long-term arrangement.” This was not written into his contract and is, Maria thinks, quite ambiguous. Abe has not worked out as well as Maria had hoped. His work is mediocre at best, and his interpersonal skills are poor. A long-term employee, Barb was divorced from her husband two years ago. She is now a single parent of three small children, and it is evident that her work performance has suffered. Carl works hardest of the three and regularly receives the highest annual evaluations. Another employee has informed Maria that Carl recently inherited a substantial sum of money from his parents’ estate. Maria believes that Carl would have a much easier time finding employment else-
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A Christian Ethic for Business 1
where than either Abe or Barb. What should Maria do? Is a Christian Ethic Possible in Business? Managers regularly confront such nerve-wracking, heart-wrenching and (often) guilt-producing scenarios. In their quest to do the “right thing” for both shareholders and subordinates, they may experience a deep sense of uncertainty. Why? Because when the “shoulds” of life are dealt with, values and relationships are brought to the forefront. Ethics—the study of “shoulds” and of doing the “right thing”— attempts to provide a value-laden framework, a grid through which real-life decisions can be made. Christian ethics is the application of Christian values to the decision-making process. What counsel does this perspective have for Maria? Does it provide a simple solution to her dilemma? One approach is to view Scripture as a book of rules to be applied to specific situations. Simply find the right rule and match it with the current problem and, bingo, the two pieces
table. While this criticism misunderstands the heart of Christian ethics, it should give pause to those who would take a rules-based approach. In ambiguous cases, it is clearly deficient in its capacity to give precise answers in every situation. Ironically, research indicates that corporations with strict codes of ethics actually are cited more often for breaking the law than their 2 counterparts without such spelled-out rules. Perhaps either human nature rebels against minute regulations or a rule-keeping perspective provides little guidance in morally ambiguous situations. Ethicist (and theologian) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was bluntly uncharitable toward such an approach, labeling it “naive” and those 3 who practice it “clowns.” Other critics attack the idea of a Christian business ethic from a different angle, arguing that Scripture has nothing relevant to say about business today. After all, they point out, the Bible was written between eighteen hundred and three thousand years ago, largely in the context of an agrarian economy. Israel’s entire gross national product under King Solomon was no doubt less than the net worth of Google or Microsoft. What significant insights, they ask, can Scripture give Maria
Corporations with strict codes of ethics actually are cited more often for breaking the law than their counterparts without such spelled-out rules. fit like a puzzle. While this strategy works fine in relatively simple situations, such as when a worker is tempted to steal or an executive considers slandering a competitor, what about more complex situations like the one confronting Maria? If Abe approaches her first, seeking to keep his job, must she heed Jesus’ admonition to “give to the one who asks you” (Matthew 5:42)? What if Barb and Carl then make similar requests? Or what if Abe assaults Maria when he learns of the possible layoff? Is she to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), or should she demand restitution and even bring criminal charges against him (Exodus 21:23—22:14)? Taking this line of reasoning a step further, is there a scriptural rule that provides guidance to Maria’s company in deciding how many units to produce or in which geographical areas to seek expansion? Attempts to find easy answers to such enigmatic situations has led one philosopher to label Christian ethics “infantile.” He compares the “rule book” approach to the types of absolute commands typically given to children between the ages of five and nine—for example, don’t talk to strangers and no singing at the dinner
in deciding the fates of Abe, Barb and Carl? Indeed, is the Bible relevant to leveraged buy-outs and software copyright infringement situations? Using Scripture as a business rule book, they contend, would be like using ancient medical scholars such4 as Galen and Hippocrates to train modern doctors. If the critics are correct in arguing, first, that the Bible is rule-bound and, second, that it lacks relevance, we need not proceed any further. If they are right, Scripture has minimal applicability to modern business practices. However, if it can be demonstrated that Christian ethics is rooted in something much deeper, then they are wrong. God’s Character The foundation of Christian ethics in business is not rules but the changeless character of God. Scripture describes God as being the creator of all things, perfect, preceding and superseding all things. It also tells how we as human beings were originally created to emulate God. Christianity operates on the notion that ethics
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A Christian Ethic for Business (the study of human character) logically follows theology (the study of God’s character). When we behave in a manner consistent with God’s character, we act ethically. When we fail to do so, we act unethically. All of Scripture—from the law of Moses to Paul’s list of virtues and vices—serves to illustrate behavior that is
A rule-keeping perspective provides little guidance in morally ambiguous situations congruent with God’s moral character. This approach is quite different from humanbased ethical systems, which generally focus on egoism (promotion of individual pleasure via material goods or career success), utilitarianism (the option that best maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain for all involved) or deontological reasoning (the keeping of moral rules 5 such as “Don’t harm others”). This is not to say that Christian ethics rejects all of these values. To the contrary, there is much overlap between Christian ethics and many human-centered ethical systems. The major difference rests in its central priority. While concerned with human happiness and the fulfillment of ethical obligations, Christian ethics does not see these as its ultimate goal. Rather, it prizes the life that seeks to emulate God’s character. Thus, the great Catholic saint Ignatius Loyola was eulogized as follows: “The aim of life is not to gain a place in the sun, nor to achieve fame or success, but to lose ourselves 6 in the glory of God.” In a similar vein, Reformer John Calvin wrote,
common responses as God’s orderliness and artistry in creation. It also goes much further, focusing on God’s self-revelation as recorded in Scripture and through his Son Jesus Christ. Three divine characteristics that have direct bearing on ethical decision-making are repeatedly emphasized in the Bible:8 1. God is holy.9 2. God is just. 10 3. God is loving. Each of these qualities will be explored in much greater depth in the following chapters [of Just Business]. Here it suffices to say that a business act is ethical if it reflects God’s holy-just-loving character. Such hyphenation is appropriate because the three qualities are so intertwined that it would be just as accurate to describe God as being loving-just-holy or just-loving-holy. The human body provides a helpful illustration. If holiness is comparable to the skeleton in providing core strength, then justice is analogous to the muscles ensuring balance, and love is similar to the flesh emanating warmth. Obviously, all three are needed in equal measure. Just imagine a body with only a skeleton (or a business with only a code of ethics)—it would be rigid and immobile. Or picture muscles without a skeleton and flesh (or a business steeped in detailed procedures and policy manuals)— they would be cold and improperly focused. Finally, consider flesh unsupported by
We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful 7 goal.
Holiness-Justice-Love If being ethical in business is reflecting God’s character, then the critical question becomes, “What is God like?” Christianity’s answer includes such
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A Christian Ethic for Business any infrastructure (or a business trying to meet every need)—it would be undefined and undisciplined. Christian ethics requires all three characteristics to be taken into account when decisions are made. Holiness, when untethered from justice and love, drifts into hypercritical legalism. Likewise, justice that loses its anchor in holiness and love produces harsh outcomes. And finally, love when it is orphaned lacks an adequate moral compass. Each of the three contains a vital ethical ingredient. Christian ethics does not involve either-or analysis—as if we could chose between holiness, justice and love—but rather a synthesis in which all three conditions must be met before an action can be considered moral. Each, like a leg on a three-legged stool, balances the other two. Highly respected clothing maker Levi Strauss has six core values. Interestingly, three of these—integrity, fairness and compassion—directly mirror the biblical principles of holiness, justice and love. The company’s remaining values of honesty, promise keeping and respect for others are also important secondary principles to be discussed later. Significantly, former CEO Robert Haas discarded the corporation’s thick ethics rule book because “it didn’t keep managers or employees from exercising poor judgment and making questionable decisions.” Instead the company now focuses on the core principles and conducts extensive employee train11 ing.
destroyed homes end up colluding with local contractors? The result was tragic: homeless Indonesians were forced to move out of12their second residences due to shoddy workmanship. The “why” questions go on and on. Why do employers feel compelled to give “honesty tests” to job applicants? Why do American employees steal billions of dollars . worth of goods from their companies annually? Why did Sanjay Kumar, former CEO of Computer Associates International, commit13securities fraud by backdating over $2 billion in sales? Why did a prosperous company like HealthSouth systematically overstate its 14 earnings by at least $1.4 billion? Scripture labels the fundamental human flaw “sin.” At its core, sin is the refusal to emulate God and
A business act is ethical if it reflects God’s holy-just-loving character
Flawed Humanity Unfortunately, being holy-justloving is easier said than done. A quick glance at the deception and broken promises common in the marketplace indicates that something is fundamentally wrong. Why is it that, despite our noblest intentions, we seem so incapable of living as we ought? Why, after a massive tsunami hit Indonesia, did ten Oxfam charity workers tasked with rebuilding
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A Christian Ethic for Business instead to set our own independent agendas. This attitude of self-sufficiency, of elevating self to god-like status, results in spiritual alienation. The apostle Paul goes so far as to call us “enemies” of God in a state of rebellion (Romans 5:10). Analogous to cancer, this moral disease infects our entire being, clouds our moral vision and alters our very character. J. I. Packer describes it as “a perverted energy...that enslaves people to God-de15 fying, self-gratifying behavior.” The result is a chasm between us and God. He remains holy-just-loving, but we have become dirty-biased-selfish. An important distinction must be made at this point between the concepts of “sin” and “sins.” While the former term describes our defective moral character, the latter includes actions that naturally follow—lying, promise breaking, stealing and so on. Two sports metaphors describe our situation. First, like archers with poor vision, sin has affected our ability to properly focus. The bad shots that follow—we often fail to even hit the target—are like sins in that they are the natural outcome of our bad eyesight. Second, we are comparable to high jumpers with broken legs. Try as we may, we cannot even come close to clearing the standard. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wryly observed, “The doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable 16 doctrine of the Christian faith.” Our fallen natures are like petri dishes in which sinful actions flourish. This is particularly problematic in the marketplace, where financial stakes are high, career destinies are decided and the temptation to rationalize unethical behavior is strong. How else can one explain17 the $3.8 billion improperly booked by WorldCom? Why did partners at PricewaterhouseCoopers overlook financial problems in audits for such scandal 18 plagued companies as Microstrategy? What caused the CEO of Tyco International to take $170 million in 19 unauthorized compensation? Lest the finger of accusation be pointed too quickly, we must all acknowledge our own susceptibility to the temptation of justifying unethical or imprudent behavior. Lewis Smedes correctly observes: “Selfdeception is a fine art. In one corner of our mind we know that something is true; in another we deny it. . . . 20 We know, but we refuse to know.” For example, despite alarming evidence against him, Adelphia Corporation’s president pled innocent to multiple counts of fraud and 21 conspiracy. He was later found guilty of all charges. Psychologists have a label for such behavior—“denial.” A Mixed Moral Bag Imagine a society operating entirely under the paradigm of sin. Sellers and purchasers could never trust
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each other, so deals would be difficult to transact. Managers would constantly spy on subordinates to prevent theft and laziness. Slavery, child labor and bribery would be common. Since “might makes right” would be the guiding principle of business, companies would hire armed personnel to protect and pursue their interests. Prisons would be full and new ones would be needed at an accelerated pace. Society would so distrust business that government regulators would be assigned to every company. These bureaucrats would in turn be inept and corrupt. As a result of all these factors, the costs of doing business would skyrocket, and the very foundations of capitalism would be undermined. While some pessimists view this as an accurate description of the direction in which our culture is heading, it is clearly a bleak picture. Thankfully, as Henry David Thoreau chided his generation, this paradigm is not the complete story of Christian ethics: “Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man and never make an effort to get 22 up.” At least three factors encourage us to arise from the moral muck. First, despite our sinful nature, our spiritual core has not been erased; we retain the “image of God.” We continue to aspire for wholeness and regret when we fall short of our ideals. Our conscience, though less reliable than originally designed, is still operative. We also remain capable of reciprocal kindness—of providing for those who in turn give something to us. Hence we ought not be surprised by acts of managerial benevolence toward hard-working, loyal employees. Second, God has established social institutions such as government, the legal system, family and business to check human sin, preserve order and provide accountability. Human authority and tradition provide the framework necessary for communal living: government punishes wrong-doers, law requires fair play, parents discipline their children, and businesses provide societal order. Without such institutions, anarchy would reign. Reformed scholars call this “common grace” because these protections extend to all members of society, regardless of whether they acknowledge God. Of course this is not to say that all governments, parents and employers are ideal. To the contrary, authority figures often abuse their power; they too are infected by sin. Rather, common grace merely affirms the general principle that human authority is necessary in an imperfect world and should ordinarily be respected. The third force for good are those whom Jesus identifies as the “salt and light” of the world (Matthew 5:13-16). As salt prevents decay and light illuminates the darkness, so Jesus expects his followers to positively affect their surroundings. Corruption is to be confronted and high moral standards are to be set. Examples
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A Christian Ethic for Business of business leaders who serve as salt and light in the marketplace include David Browne, CEO of LensCrafters, who leads his company using the servantleadership model of Jesus. “At first,” he reflects, “I was a classic numbers only butthead. . . . But now I want to 23 serve folks, to help them be the best they can be.” Bill Pollard, former CEO of ServiceMaster, grew a billiondollar company on the belief that every individual, including every janitor and launderer, is an image-bearer of God. By bringing this value to the marketplace, he 24 has enabled thousands to find dignity in their work. Likewise, Dennis Bakke, former CEO of energy giant AES, included fun as a core corporate value due to his belief that God intends for humans to enjoy the thrill 25 of creativity. These business leaders, while realistic about human nature, did not base their careers on a half-emptyglass paradigm of sin. Rather, they saw the glass as being at least half full, with opportunities to be holy-just-loving in one of the most challenging arenas of all—the marketplace. This book [Just Business] is an exploration of how we might follow their lead in wrestling with tough, real-world issues.
Creative Morality in an Imperfect World To summarize, Christian ethics recognizes that the vast majority of humans are neither “wicked” nor “angelic” but fall somewhere in between on the moral continuum. Christian ethics also acknowledges that it is difficult to be holy-just-loving, not only because of human foibles but also because worldly institutions and systems are marred. This brings us back to the case involving Abe, Barb and Carl. Economic realities require that the budget be cut. In God’s original plan for a perfect world, such a decision would no doubt have been unnecessary. But since humanity and its various systems, including the market, are imperfect, difficult choices must be made. It is quite probable that the final solution for Abe, Barb and Carl will be less than ideal but may represent what is possible under the circumstances. Like an optometrist during an eye exam, Maria’s task is to line up the three lenses of holiness, justice and love so that they align as much as possible. It is imperative that Maria not constrict her range of possible choices too hastily. While it would be simple
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A Christian Ethic for Business to frame the problem as having only three options—fire Abe, fire Barb or fire Carl—she should opt to emulate God’s creativity instead. Rather than abandoning us in our moral failure, God lovingly devised a plan for our restoration. It is important to note here that in doing so, neither holiness nor justice was sacrificed. In a stunningly creative move, God took the radical step of substituting his own Son for us, casting our punishment on him. The roughly analogous act in the situation in-
volving Abe, Barb and Carl would be for Maria to fire herself! A more modest integration of holiness, justice and love might lead to some type of job sharing, joint reduction in hours, a deferral in capital spending or, at minimum, a severance package for the dismissed employee. In any event, Maria should explore all options before acting and choose the one that is most pure, fair and benevolent to all involved.
Notes
Billion Accounting Fraud,” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (March 19, 2003), <www.sec.gov/news/press/ 2003-04.htm> 15 J.I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness (Ann Arbor, MI.: Servant, 1992), p. 107. 16 Oliver Williams and John Houck, Full Value: Cases in Christian Ethics (San Francisco, CA.: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 61. 17 Jack Ulick, “WorldCom’s Financial Bomb,” CNN Money ( June 25, 2002) <www.money.cnn.com/2002/06/25/news/worldcom/ index.htm>. 18 Janice Revell, “The Fires That Won’t Go Out,” Fortune (October 13, 2003), pp. 139-42. 19 Julia Boorstin, “The World’s Most Corrupt Leaders,” Forbes, March 29, 2004. 20 Lewis Smedes, Mere Morality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 18. 21 Associated Press, “Adelphia Founder John Rigas Found Guilty,” MSNBC.com ( July 8, 2004) <www.msnbc.msnl.com>. 22 Williams and Houck, Full Value, p. 28. 23 Kevin Miller, “Blending Faith and Work: Secrets of Success,” (2005), posted on August 18, 2007, at <www.secretsofsuccess. com/people.browne.html>. 24 Tim Ferguson, “Inspired from Above, ServiceMaster Dignifies Those Below,” Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1990, A25. 25 Angela Tennant, “Dennis Bakke’s Ode to Joy,” Christianity Today, July 10, 2005, p. 63.
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Humanist philosopher P.H. Nowell-Smith, quoted in Richard Higginston, Dilemmas (Louisville, KY.: John Knox, 1988), p. 55. 2 R. Meiners, A. Ringleb and F. Edwards, The Legal Environment of Business, 5th ed. (Minneapolis, MN.: West, 1994), p. 191. 3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Mcmillan, 1979), pp. 23233. 4 William Barclay, Christian Ethics for Today (San Francisco, CA.: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 27. 5 For a further discussion of the difference between ethics and morals see Meiner, Ringleb and Edwards, Legal Environment, p. 193. 6 Donald Bloesch, Freedom for Obedience: Evangelical Ethics in Contemporary Times (San Francisco, CA.: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 32. 7 Ibid., p. 32. 8 For a more complete discussion, see chapter two of Just Business. 9 For a more complete discussion, see chapter three of Just Business. 10 See also chapter four of Just Business. 11 John McClenahen, “Good Enough,” Industry Week, February 20, 1995, p. 59. 12 Jane Perlez, “Aid Groups Are Criticized Over Tsunami Reconstruction,” New York Times, July 27, 2006, A3. 13 Associated Press, “Ex-CA Executive Pleads Guilty,” New York Times, July 22, 2006, C22. See also Matt Hamblen, “Former CA Chief Sanjay Kumar Indicted on Fraud Charges,” Computerworld, September 22, 2004. 14 “SEC Charges Health South CEO Richard Scrushy with $1.4
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Hill is President of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, based in Madison, Wisconsin, a nondenominational ministry serving nearly 39,000 core students and faculty on 576 college and university campuses nationwide. Prior to joining InterVarsity, Alec served as Dean of the School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University. Alec earned a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law and a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Biblical Studies from Seattle Pacific University.
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WORSHIP IN THE TRENCHES - ETHICS CASES
Cases of Christian Business Ethics by Buck Jacobs
T
rue worship is demonstrated through obedience. In our lives as Christians our obedience to our Lord defines our testimony and provides us with opportunities to witness the difference Christ makes in our lives. He is seen in the differences. The primary source of our “rules of engagement” with what defines our obedience is God’s inspired and written Word. Each believer has the personal responsibility to read, study, discern truth and apply it. True obedience to biblical commandments and principles is the challenge of every believer. Christians live in a world of myriad and momentary choices; choices that confront us continually as we process through life situations and the relationships of the “real world.” The choices we make combine to form the true Christian witness of our lives. Our testimony is not “optional.” Our testimony is what the external world sees as it observes our lives and weighs what it sees with what it hears from our lips. This is as true in our relationships and activities in the marketplace as in any other role or area of our life. This paper approaches the topic of business ethics from the perspective that the only basis for ethics is from a Christ-centered worldview. As F. Dostoevsky writes, “without God anything is permissible, crime is inevitable” (The Brothers Karazamov, Part IV, Book 11, Ch. 4). The cases presented here are all real happenings, offered as examples of individuals who strived to apply biblical principles in their lives. There are no presumptions of dogmatic interpretation, nor are the outcomes intended to be perfect or necessarily correct.
Do we ever truly lose when we obey God?
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THE GAMBLE T
om, a visible and respected Christian leader in his church and community, and the owner of a business that supplied components to the construction industry, had experienced six to seven years of substantial, double digit business growth. He had taken advantage of liberal financing terms offered by several competing banks to expand his business to the limit of his credit allocations. When the business climate cooled a bit, and the market flattened, Tom’s creditors tightened the reporting process and required first quarterly and then monthly financial statements. Tom struggled but was able to stay within his compliance requirements for almost a year as the market continued to slow. Then a particularly rough month produced what would have to be reported as a significant loss. Tom feared that if he reported the loss and fell out of compliance, the bank would call his loan. He realized that under the circumstance he would not have the means to repay the debt and sustain the business. An option appeared. Tom had a large order from one of his best customers that was due to be shipped the following month. If he reported the sales in the current month it would change the result from loss to profit and give him at least another month to work things out. The customer had been loyal and consistent and Tom had no reason to believe that the order would not be shipped as scheduled.
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What should he do? Tom’s possible options: 1. Call the customer and ask for permission to ship the order early. 2. Just count it in the current month’s shipments and hope for the best. 3. Sit down with the bank, explain the situation and ask for advice. Helpful Scriptural passages : Prov. 22:7; Hab. 2:6 -7 ; Ps. 37:21; Eph. 4:25
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WORSHIP IN THE TRENCHES - ETHICS CASES
THE TAINTED PROPERTY G
eorge, the owner of a substantial agribusiness and an Elder in his local church, was offered an unusual opportunity to purchase an adjacent parcel of land that would double his holding and potentially triple his revenue. The price was 25-30% below what he would have considered as fair market value. His credit was excellent and terms would be prime minus one percent. The deal was a “slamdunk,” until… In filling out the loan paperwork George came to a question which asked: “Are there any environmental contamination judgments or pending violation circumstances on this property (i.e., George’s property, which would be the collateral for the loan). George hesitated. There wasn’t any except for a serious spillage of diesel fuel from one of George’s storage tanks two years prior. George had researched and applied all the remediation techniques that the EPA would call for, yet he had not reported the incident to the EPA as the law required. The loan approval process would require an EPA audit. The location of the spill was a bit removed from the primary operations facilities and was not at one of the main storage sites. Chances were the spill site would be spared from the test. On the other hand, if it were to be examined and failed the test, the transaction would surely fall through. The prized property would go to his competitor and George’s lie would be obvious.
What should he do? George’s possible options: 1. Answer “no” to the question and return the signed papers. The chances for uncovering the omission were slim to none. Acknowledging that he had not reported the incident could throw a monkey’s wrench in the deal. 2. Go to the bank and explain the situation. Ask the bank for time to go to the EPA and follow their remediation process. 3.Other.......... Helpful Scriptural passages: Rom. 13:1-2; Matt. 5:13,14,16; Matt7:12 ; Prov. 22:1.
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THE FAVOR F
our partners owned a specialty chemicals business that was growing nicely. The majority owner (CEO) had come to know Christ four years earlier. He had since shared his faith experience with his partners and they had also become believers. They all agreed that their business should reflect the Christian way of living and committed to doing so going forward. The partners decided to come together and read the Bible and pray before work on Friday mornings. They soon realized that the Scriptures were very clear in identifying them as stewards of God’s property. They were convicted of the need to operate their business in harmony with God’s commandments, principles, and values. One Friday the group was studying the Book of Romans. When the verse of 13:1 “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities…” was read, someone interjected, “I wonder how the authorities would like our taking liquor orders for the managers at X Corp?” A sudden silence fell in the room as everyone realized that the answer to that question would be very problematic for the business. X Corp. was their best customer, well respected in the industry, and accounting for fully one-third of their business. The circumstance was that the state in which X Corp. was domiciled had a liquor tax that was fully fifteen percent above the state where the partners had their business. As a favor for their customer the partners would purchase the liquor in their state on behalf of the managers and supervisors at X Corp. and deliver it on the next weekly sales call to the plant. The liquor was for personal
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consumption only and the partners would make no profit on the purchase. The CEO had known the plant manager at X Corp. for several years but had never mentioned his conversion to Christianity and his subsequent committal of operating the business in accordance with biblical principles. What should the partners do? Their possible options: 1. Don’t do anything. The small scale of the transgression doesn’t warrant a big fuss. 2. Conveniently “forget” to ask for the liquor order next month and hope it goes away. 3. Tell the plant manager that the wives object to the practice. 4. Ask one of the other suppliers if they would like to take over the liquor supply. Helpful Scriptural passages: Matt 10:32-33; Prov. 3:5-7; I Peter 2:13; Proverbs 28:10.
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WORSHIP IN THE TRENCHES - ETHICS CASES
CHOICES & CONSEQUENCES THE GAMBLE
THE TAINTED PROPERTY
Tom included the unshipped order in his current monthly result and reported to the bank. The customer subsequently cancelled the order and could not be persuaded to take it under any circumstances. Sales for the following month was worse. Tom was forced to correct his statements for the bank and acknowledge his actions. The bank called his loan. Tom lost his business in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding. His Christian testimony was compromised.
George went to the EPA and confessed what he had done. The woman in charge of the local EPA office was so astonished by his candor that she asked why he had taken that course. George said that he was a Christian and that the circumstances had been used to convict him of his sin (Rom. 13:1). He was sorry that he had not done the right thing and reported the spill sooner. He outlined the clean-up processes he had used and promised to cooperate fully in any testing required. The EPA audited the spill-site as part of the approval process. It passed the test. The loan was approved and George’s business has continued to grow and prosper.
THE FAVOR The partners made a trip to X Corp. and met with the plant manager, sharing their faith experience with him and explaining their desire to live their lives in harmony with biblical teaching. They each shared how coming to faith had changed their worldview and how excited they were to pursue it to the end. The plant manager listened attentively. When they had finished, the CEO said to the plant manager, “We hope that our decision won’t prevent you from continuing to do business with us.” The plant manager replied, “Do you really think that you have our business because you save us a few bucks on our booze? You have our business because you give us the best product, at the best cost, with the best service that we can find. If and when that changes you’ll lose our business! Now get the (expletive) out of here!” The partners went away rejoicing! Two weeks later the fifteen year old son of the plant manager was thrown backwards in a wrestling meet and landed in the back of his neck. He was paralyzed from the waist down. When the partners learned of the injury they immediately gathered to pray for the boy. The CEO then called the plant manager to tell him they had prayed and that they felt assurance that the boy would
recover. Later that day the plant manager went to the hospital to see his son. “Son, you won’t believe this,” the father said, “but the president of one of the companies that we do business with at the plant called me today and told me that he and his partners stopped work today to pray for you to get well. He said that they were sure you would recover.” The boy did recover and was sent home to rest for two weeks before rejoining school. On his next visit, after the business talk was finished, the plant manager reached behind his desk and handed the CEO an oil painting. “My son did this for you,” he said. In the drawing there were two large hands holding up the globe. Across the top of the painting it reads “He’s got the whole world in His hands” and across the bottom is the name of the partners’ firm. The CEO took the painting to a graphic artist who created a new logo that his firm soon adopted. Under the stylized globe are also the words “A Christian Company.”
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WORSHIP IN THE TRENCHES - ETHICS CASES
PARTING THOUGHTS
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bedience often appears to create risk. The author of Hebrews reminds us:
But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Heb. 11:6 NKJV) Faith means stepping out onto or into uncertainty. Obedience in faith pleases God. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. (I Sam. 15:22b). Each decision we make has significant faith ramifications. The question is always “What does God say?” Some powerful tools that God has provided in this regard are: • Every believer has a personal responsibility to study, absorb and apply God’s Word as a basis for daily living. • Seek Godly counsel through accountable relationships with like-minded believers. • Learn from experiences that others have had and shared. • Keep a consistent focus on the first three.
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Power Tools For Spiritual Warfare • Every believer has a personal responsibility to study, absorb and apply God’s Word as a basis for daily living. • Seek Godly counsel through accountable relationships with like-minded believers. • Learn from experiences that others have had and shared. • Keep a consistent focus on the first three.
We will close with this question: Do we ever truly lose when we obey God?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Buck Jacobs is Chairman and Founder of The C12 Group (www.C12group. com), America’s leading provider of Christian CEO/Owner roundtable services. Prior to C12’s founding in 1992, Buck served as Board Director and Vice-President of Sales of the S.H. Mack Company. Buck was instrumental in the global development of Mack, a successful Christ-centered business which was later acquired by a large public company. Buck’s earlier experiences include Managing Director of Sta-Power Italia, Spa., CEO of The Executive Development Institute, and President and Director of R.G. Haskins/N.A. Strand Corp. Buck is the author of A Light Shines Bright in Babylon – A Handbook for Christian Business Owners, A Strategic Plan for Ministry, and The Parable of The Janitor and the CEO.
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CONFERENCE EXCERPTS
Christian Business Ethics in Theory and Practice Cross-Cultural Perspectives *Excerpts from discussion of leadership panel
Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note:
The economic turmoil of recent years has heightened the awareness of business ethics across the world. For Christians, the only ethical standards that matter are those laid down by God in His Word. On Oct. 1, 2012, the Center for Christianity in Business at HBU convened a conference in which a panel of business leaders from the U.S. and China, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s two biggest economies but with drastically different cultural and political heritages, share their perspectives on best practices of Christian ethics in business. We hope an excerpt of the dialogue, as presented here, will offer great practical insights for all Christians dealing with ethical dilemmas in the marketplace that transcend geographical and cultural boundaries.
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CONFERENCE EXCERPTS Henley: Just this afternoon I read a quote from a Chinese business expert who said, “Economic viability requires a serious moral ethics.” Some say ethics are moral principles of right conduct that govern a person’s life or a company’s actions. But what is right conduct? In 2007 during a special Politburo session convened to study the impact of religion, Chinese President Hu Jintao acknowledged, “The knowledge and strength of the religious people must be mustered to build a prosperous society.” A Chinese scholar wrote, “Only by accepting and understanding God’s transcendence as our standard can we understand important concepts like freedom, human rights, tolerance and equality.” Another Chinese scholar suggested that “Christianity provides the common moral foundation that is able to reduce the corruption and narrow the gap between rich and poor, and even improve the environment.” Can ethics work apart from the concept of transcendent absolute moral values? What is the basis for ethical conduct when, in both China and the U.S., many in business today simply do not believe in God? Jacobs: Ethics are an expression of morality and morality must be grounded on absolute values. If morality is negotiable then there is no morality. We Christians recognize our adversary who, from the very beginning, has tried to deny the existence of the absolute moral standard that is laid down by God. There are only three bases for ethics. The first would be the vote of the majority. If most people in the world thought we should do away with people over 50 then this crowd would be a lot smaller here tonight. An alternative would be for a ruling minority to enforce their definition of ethics on the majority. We see that it doesn’t work very well, as we behold the history of all dictatorships. The third would be an absolute moral code laid down by a higher authority who is absolutely moral and righteous in character. God’s Word and moral codes are trans-cultural and trans-temporal, because they never change. In a world that is lost in relative morality and conflicting philosophies, Christians must bear witness to the one standard that always works. Jesus is the only way. Henley: What kind of standards do you see in the business world today if not the absolute standards you mentioned? What are the consequences of ignoring those absolute standards? Jacobs: One example is the economic turmoil that
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THE PANELISTS Wallace Henley (moderator) is the author and collaborator of over 20 books, including his latest best-selling Globequake: Living in the Unshakeable Kingdom While the World Falls Apart (Thomas Nelson, 2012). Journalist, leadership consultant, and former White House aide, Wallace is the founder of Headwaters Leadership Institute and an Associate Pastor of Houston’s 60,000 member Second Baptist Church. Buck Jacobs is Chairman and Founder of The C12 Group, America’s leading provider of Christian CEO/Owner roundtable services. Prior to C12’s founding, Buck served as Board Director and Vice President of Sales of the S.H. Mack Company, where in 10 years he led a tenfold increase in sales and was instrumental in the global development of a successful Christ-centered business which was later acquired by a large public company. During this time, the Mack Company was a founding member of The Fellowship of Companies for Christ International (FCCI) where Buck later served as the Florida Director. Buck’s earlier experiences include Managing Director of Sta-Power Italia, Spa., CEO of The Executive Development Institute, and President and Director of R.G. Haskins/ N.A. Strand Corp. Buck is the author of A Light Shines Bright in Babylon – A Handbook for Christian Business Owners, A Strategic Plan for Ministry, and The Parable of The Janitor and the CEO.
Steeve Kay was co-founder (1981), President and CEO of QTC Management, a leading provider of web-based medical disability evaluation services to America’s $400 billion disability benefit industry. Prior to QTC, which he sold in 2005, Steeve spent 15 years with several semiconductor companies in California’s Silicon Valley and helped redesign and commercialize the world’s first solid-state metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) power transistor, used in PCs, sound systems and many industrial applications. In 2003 Ernst & Young awarded him “Entrepreneur of the Year in Technology”. Presently Steeve is an investor and philanthropist, and the founder of Tee Hub (business incubator), KINNOVATION L3C, Univicity, the Kay Institute of Thinking, and the Kay Family Foundation. He served as trustee of the University of California, Irvine and founded the Kay Center for E-Health Research at Claremont Graduate University. Steeve holds a MSEE from Stanford and MBA from Pepperdine University.
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CONFERENCE EXCERPTS
Bill Mearse is Managing Director of Accenture’s Houston office and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the firm’s Resources Sector, a $5+ billion business involving the oil and gas, chemical, utilities, metal, mining and paper industries. He is responsible for the growth and profitability of the Resources global business and participates on several Accenture management committees.
Tao Zhang is the Director and Deputy General Manager of The Beijing Hiconics Drive Technology Co., Ltd. and is a Shareholder and Senior Consultant with Beijing Gohigher Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. He is also an attorney with the Jin Tai Law Firm in Beijing. He holds an EMBA from Tsinghua University and a doctor of law from Wuhan University. the world has endured in recent years. I believe it is the direct result of the absence of those standards. We are paying the price for the unbridled greed that permeated our economic-political system for far too long. Without the restraint of clear absolute standards, man will always seek his own interest at the expense of others. Henley: Every sector of life has a kingdom mission from God. The mission of business is to provide for society’s material needs in a fair and honest manner. Embracing God’s Word is the only way to ensure that business is done right. Marketplace Christians in China today face unique challenges in this respect. How are they coping with these challenges? Zhang: The business environment in China is more complex than in the U.S due to legal and cultural differences. After China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, political and business leaders started paying more attention to moral values across the world. Many Chinese Christians are young in their faith, but they seek spiritual growth eagerly and show obedience in action, not merely in words. When they face ethical dilemmas, and there are many in China, marketplace Christians often react in one of several ways. First, they may compromise, a reaction more or less in line with Chinese cultural traditions. The danger here is of course they may fall for the second best instead of the best option, the easy choice instead of the right choice.
Second, they may choose to avoid the situation altogether because they want to be faithful to the Scripture. It is not unusual for some to abandon their professions after their conversion because they do not want to face temptations. Then there are those who act as “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Mt. 16:10). A business man in Wenzhou decided to engage in businesses that do not rely heavily on guanxi (relationship) – which typically involve under-the-table deals to advance the business. When the pressure mounted for compromising his principles, he redoubled the quality of his management and built networks through close friendship with the leadership of vendors and customers. Another entrepreneur made himself known for his integrity and the high quality of his products. When the poor quality of his competitors’ products was exposed and backfired on their business, customers turned to him in droves and his business was greatly blessed. I believe there is no substitute for earnest supplication when we are challenged ethically in the marketplace. Our God who is faithful will surely guide us to the right decisions. As Apostle Paul reminds us: “We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint.” (Rom. 5:3). Henley: In the early decades of the Industrial Revolution people worshipped on Sundays but left the Scripture behind come Mondays, leading to widespread mistreatment of laborers in the workplace. Over time those who understood the Bible’s teaching about the worth of human beings helped bring about changes in management philosophy which gave new priority to the development of the worker. This new awakening to the ethical treatment of workers in turn led to improved morale and productivity, thus affirming the wisdom of God’s Word. Given that God’s laws always set a higher universal standard than man’s, what are some best practices marketplace Christians need to follow to ensure they work to please God and not just man? Mearse: One of the best practices I have experienced is to differentiate our behavior, to set apart from the world as the Scripture commands. I started working at age fifteen, for my dad, who would tell me “Son, always remember whatever you do, whatever you say will be a reflection on me because I am the boss.” Christians need to remember that what we do and what we say will always reflect on God.
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CONFERENCE EXCERPTS Some behaviors are fairly basic – I don’t use profanity and I don’t drink. When I travel, and I do that too frequently as a consultant, I will leave the rest of the party after dinner and go to bed, when the others opt for the men’s club. That accomplishes two things: first I differentiate my behavior; second I am the only one without a headache the next morning. Second, we must learn to manage risk. This means avoiding compromising situations, those that could put us in trouble before we know it. Being able to recognize these dangers and to run from them, much like what Joseph did with Potiphar’s wife (cf. Gen. 39), is critical. Back in the 1990s when I was managing our SAP energy practice, we needed to recruit people from outside of the U.S. to catch up with the fast growing
market. One job candidate told me he needed a special visa to get into the U.S. When I told him we don’t do that, his reaction was “Oh, you follow the rules?” “Yes, every time,” was my response. In another instance we got a proposal on a huge but complex deal from a client. Upon careful examination it became obvious that part of the deal was illegal. Some in our organization suggested we should bid and perhaps we can finesse our way out of it later. I would have no part of that and we chose not to bid. One thing I learned about managing risk is that if you avoid compromising situations on principle, people will recognize that and fewer compromising situations will present themselves. A third practice is to diversify your relationships. Many business people I know keep all their relation-
Christian Insights for Ethical Living in the Marketplace Henley “I set my boundaries… They limited my career, but they strengthen my witness.” Jacobs “Look for teachable moments when your behavior illustrates a biblical principle. Be willing and ready to explain why what you do will make a difference in situations.” Kay “It is critical for leaders to live by example. They must act according to their core belief.” Mearse “Differentiate our behavior…Learn to manage risk…Diversify relationships…Simplify decision making…(and) Think long term.” Zhang “There is no substitute for earnest supplication when we are challenged ethically in the marketplace. Our God who is faithful will surely guide us to the right decisions.”
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CONFERENCE EXCERPTS ships in their company or with people in the same business as they are. I keep my relationships not only in my business, but also with people in my church, my family, and other parts of my life away from business. Diversified relationships give us broader perspectives and keep us grounded ethically with help from many counsels. Yet another practice is to simplify our decision making. We live in a world that creates a lot of gray, making it hard sometimes to tell right from wrong. One way to simplify decision making is to create more black and white; that is, to make decisions based on principles and not situations. As Christians, our decision principles spring from the Word of God. In fact many secular business books today discuss principles that are based on the Bible, yet many people don’t even realize it. A final best practice is to think long term. People who make poor ethical decisions are acting with myopic vision because these decisions cannot stand the test of time. For Christian to think long term is to think eternity. So as Christians our ethical behavior may cause us short term losses, but they inevitably lead to long term, eternal gains. Henley: I was an aide to President Richard Nixon when the Watergate Scandal broke, sending many of my associates to jail. By God’s grace two things protected me in that experience. First my supervisor was a godly man who refused to participate in any shady activities. When the Watergate scandal was being planned, he and I were, thank God, conveniently left out. Second, I set my boundaries when I first went to the White House, knowing it is a dangerous place. One boundary is to never have anything to do with a money bill from which I might benefit. Another is to never get involved in relationships that might hurt my wife and my family. Yet another is to never practice politics that attack an opponent’s person, only the issues. These things limited my career, but they strengthen my witness and kept me out of jail. What experience can you share that challenged you as a follower of Christ? Kay: In business, leadership is everything. How successful an enterprise can become depends on the leader’s value and vision and how they are shared and implemented among the ranks. It is critical for leaders to live by example. They must act according to their core belief. The devil presents Christian leaders with serious challenges often and core belief is where they can turn to for anchor. In my firm we have rules against gift giving by subordinates to superiors especially during the holidays. This is not so much a symbol of our values but
more so to help cultivate a culture of integrity and minimize opportunistic behavior. As enterprises grow, procedures instituted to protect such culture become more important. Once we had a contract in which we were required to pay the client $200,000 when a certain volume of audit work was completed on their behalf. The contract lasted for 5-years, but by the time we reached the critical volume neither we nor our client remembered the clawback provision. After some time someone in our firm happened upon it and we wasted no time to send them a check for the amount agreed, although they did not expect it. Our integrity earned us more trust with this client as a result. In another instance, we had to file a medical report to the government as part of our audit work. The state in which the audit was being conducted required a medical doctor to sign the report, although in our home state an assistant could sign on behalf of the medical doctor. It turned out at the eleventh hour when the report was finally ready, the medical doctor who should have signed the report was unavailable, and our onsite manager decided to sign on his behalf in order to meet the deadline. The report was rejected by the government because of this oversight and our business was subsequently closed down in that state as a result. This teaches us a lesson that integrity can never be compromised. There is no such thing as luck for dishonest deeds in business because we work in God’s economy. Henley: Centuries ago, a Roman wrote these words to another Roman: “As the soul is in the body, that’s what Christians are in the world.” He was describing all the good works of these people called Christians being done in Rome: feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, and dealing kindness even to the Romans. We know the soul of a company is in its culture. How then do you infuse your values in the culture of your firm, knowing that it matters for the soul of the non-Christians in your workforce? Jacobs: It starts with you. Walk the talk. Look for teachable moments when your behavior illustrates a biblical principle. Be willing and ready to explain why what you do will make a difference in situations. Memorize Matthew 6:32: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Mearse: First, as Christians we need to demonstrate our capability, showing our intellect as well as our work ethics. Christians should be the best workers a company has. Next we need to develop our credibility by making an impact with our integrity. If our capability and cred-
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ibility are not in doubt, God will give us opportunities to have dialogues with others about our faith. That’s how we will impact our culture as individuals. Zhang: First we must pray for the workers, for the company’s affairs, large and small. That’s what my wife and I do every day, even through prayer networks using cell phones. Second, we need to walk the talk. As principals we must love and care for our subordinates with un-
bounded unselfishness. Kay: We make no overt attempt to proselytize our nonChristian colleagues, but from our employee handbook to our daily interaction with them we bear the witness of biblical values. We engage marketplace chaplains in our firm who are there to share the good news and bring comfort to those who are in need. We lay a biblical foundation in our corporate culture which over time will and does win over many souls.
As the soul is in the body, that’s what Christians are in the world.
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT APPLICATION TO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT By Al Erisman Denise Daniels
Abstract Over the past fifteen years, a variety of high profile performance failures and ethical scandals have rocked the business world. “Business ethics” has become a seeming oxymoron. Most ethical failures start with very small choices that can be difficult to recognize as ethical problems. They might simply be attitude issues, or pushing the boundary without crossing the “line.” In a performance review, managers look for something specific, and discussions of attitude tend to be more subjective. We propose managers should have a discussion around different parameters of what together make up
attitude, using the nine characteristics of the fruit of the spirit, as defined in Scripture. From a sample of performance appraisal instruments we found that employees were frequently being asked about faithfulness, but that patience and self-control - two characteristics often at the heart of so many ethical crises - were rarely mentioned. We show how these characteristics from the Scriptures might be used in a broadly secular setting and how doing so can become a foundation for encouraging an ethical discussion before there is an identified
problem.
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT Introduction
T
here is a big difference between legal compliance and ethical performance. For legal compliance, the question centers on “going over the line.” For too many, the focus is on how close one can get to the line without crossing it. Ethical performance by contrast focuses on doing good, which is a great deal different from avoiding doing bad. Pushing close to the line seemed to be at the heart of the Enron problem (see Enron box) and may be a factor in other crises as well. Another reason why simply following the letter of the law leads to trouble is rooted in the nature of the law. Laws generally look backwards, fixing past problems through regulation. In times of great change, such as dealing with a business world transformed by technology and globalization, there will continue to be many situations where there is no law in place to set the mark for what is right. Ethical performance focuses on appropriate actions where the law is silent. (see Don Flow box.) The challenge of ethical performance management is evident in the myriad of ethical failures in business, from Enron, to mortgage and investment banks to British Petroleum. Yet managing for ethics is challenging. Failures and shortcomings are more difficult to “pin down” before they become something big. Discussions are often more subjective. What is the basis for having a conversation about ethics beyond compliance? We believe the nine manifestations of the fruit of the spirit provide a great foundation for this discussion: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.” (Gal. 5:22-23, NASB) Each attribute creates the opportunity for a discussion that would get at the root of ethical challenges. For an organization managed and run
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Enron: The Slippery Slope of Moral Torpidity In the Fall of 2001, Enron business practices were being audited by Arthur Andersen. Such audits are not simply black and white, but require judgment and a great deal of wisdom. But as the word started to get out about what was going on, Andersen’s auditor started shredding documents, and the world came tumbling down. According to Bob Wright, a former Andersen executive, “I don’t think even Dave Duncan, the partner in charge of the Enron account—the one who shredded the documents—one day said, “I’m going to help Enron cheat.” I think the reason he did it was the incredible pressure there is on any world-class organization to be the best all the time. Then you have a client who’s beating on you: ‘Why can’t we do this?’ And Enron wasn’t in there alone. There were attorneys, investment bankers, Enron management, beating on this guy who’s probably trying to slow things down. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit but I don’t think so. I think it’s one small piece at a time, and then you look back after two or three years and think, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I do?’”1 Al Erisman, “Bob Wright: Courage in an Ethical Crisis,” Ethix Magazine, January, 2005, http://ethix. org/2005/02/01/courage-in-an-ethical-crisis (accessed July 5, 2013). 1
Don Flow: The Heart of Ethical Leadership Don Flow has built a business of 32 auto dealerships in North Carolina and Virginia, and has established a strong ethical foundation with a set of values and practices that are exemplary. It is one thing to have such an intent, but another thing to make it real throughout the 800 people in the organization. Flow Automotive has done this through careful hiring and promotion practices that go beyond simply achieving compliance with the guidelines. Here is the way Don put it: “I want to be careful saying all 800 believe the way I do. We think about different levels of commitment. At the bottom is Noncompliance. The next level up we call Grudging Compliance. That is, if somebody’s staring at you, you’ll do it; if they’re not staring at you, you’re not going to do it. Neither of these will work. Sometimes we let a person in the Grudging Compliance group stay for a little while. But our culture is strong enough that Noncompliance doesn’t work at all. His or her peers will say, “This is not how we do business here.” They either leave or are fired.” The next category is Genuine Compliance, where motivation is more external. These people say, “I really like the people I work with here. They pay well, they treat you well, if this is what you have to do to be successful here, I’ll do it.” We call those “good soldiers.” We can’t have them in positions of leadership. Over time, they may begin to see and believe, but they don’t move up if they haven’t made it internal. The next level we call Enrollment. These folks believe and live it out themselves. They can’t imagine not working this way. We’re very careful that our significant positions of leadership are staffed only by folks in the highest category. Even a very high producer will not be in a significant position of leadership without this internalized understanding of how we operate.2 Al Erisman, “Don Flow: Ethics at Flow Automotive,” Ethix Magazine, April 2004, http:// ethix.org/2004/04/01/ethics-at-flow-automotive (accessed July 5, 2013). 2
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT with an explicitly Christian identity, the appeal can be made to the biblical foundation. Individual Christians can also use these as a check on their own performance. But even in a secular organization, these nine characteristics can become a topic for discussion related to ethical performance without explicit reference to this biblical text. This may provide the start of a more explicit ethical performance assessment. In this research we asked whether these characteristics were being discussed even at an implicit level during performance evaluations. We gathered a number of performance evaluation instruments from businesses and non-profit organizations, reviewing them against the specific nine characteristics. We found that some of these characteristics were being carefully measured, but others were virtually ignored. In particular, faithfulness was commonly referenced and measured, while patience and self-control were rarely evaluated in performance reviews. Background In the performance management process, it is common to evaluate skills, behaviors and performance outcomes. But businesses are seeing the importance of evaluating more than these for two different reasons. First, business failures from Enron to banks and mortgage lenders suggest that successful management is the result of much more than simply technical skills. Linkletter and Marciariello ask, “What do managers and executives value and why? If organizations are about human beings, from where do these human beings derive their values?”3 A growing literature is recognizing that business needs to do a better job of moving beyond technical expertise to encouraging and embracing ethical values in its employees and leaders. The second reason for considering more than skills, behaviors or performance outcomes in the performance management process is that the values of individuals are increasingly being recognized for their role in creating a positive organizational environment and a positive experience for the customer. These values have a large impact on the productive environment in the workforce and also influence customers’ perspectives of the business. Fruit of the Spirit – Employee Characteristics While we believe that the fruit of the Spirit have implications for the workplace, it would be somewhat surprising to find terms such as “love” or “joy” on a performance appraisal instrument. So, our first task was to define these nine characteristics in ways which would make sense in an organizational context, with particular
emphasis on presenting these in a way that could communicate clearly to a person who did not self-identify as a person of faith, or recognize the authority of the Christian scriptures. We examined each of the nine descriptions of the fruit of the Spirit and identified ways each one might be expressed in a workplace setting. Love Love marks a caring and welcoming organization. In a workplace context, a person would express love by caring for others and making a strong unconditional commitment to their well-being; this attitude might manifest itself in an employee’s relationships with subordinates, colleagues, bosses, suppliers, or customers. Employees who measure highly on “love” would be more likely to value interpersonal relationships compared with those who do not measure highly on love. However, love could also be expressed by those who have minimal human interaction in their work; in such a case, love could be expressed by the extent to which the person sees their work as a means of ultimately offering value to others. In their book Theory R Management, Alderson and McDonnell illustrate the transformation that comes to the workplace when people are treated with love4. Dignity and respect come to characterize interactions with colleagues and customers. Ultimately, the organization may become known for this type of attitude which pervades its culture. Southwest Airlines, for example, has “LUV” as its stock symbol, recognizing the importance of this attitude. Joy Joy is characterized by feelings of great happiness or pleasure, and is infectious in providing motivation for work, and inspiration for others. This is not the same as superficial excitement, whipped up in an artificial way through cheers and slogans, but the deep satisfaction of doing that which provides meaning. Many do not experience this joy however, and there are frequent expressions of dissatisfaction from employees at every level of the organization.5 But research shows that it doesn’t have to be this way; one’s work can provide more satisfaction than a day at the beach when people are engaging in activities which are perceived to well utilize their skills and talents in service to others.6 At least some organizations are looking for people who find joy in their work. In The Little IKEA Dictionary written by company founder, Ingvar Kamprad for IKEA employees, he discusses how the “Ikea Spirit” differentiates the company and is “built on our enthusiasm.” According to Kamprad, “If you are not enthusiastic about your job, a third of your life goes to waste”.7
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT Similarly, Dennis Bakke, the former president and CEO of the energy firm AES Corporation, discussed his company’s approach to developing a joyful workplace in his book Joy at Work. He argues that meaningful work in which people can reason, make decisions and be held accountable for their actions, creates joy, which in turn can help ensure “the successful functioning of the team, community or company.”8 Peace
Kindness Kindness stands out when it is offered at work, and much of the research on organizational citizenship behaviors and extra-role behaviors reflects this concept: A colleague recognizes a person who is struggling and offers a hand or someone to talk with; a boss sees an employee who is dealing with a difficult personal situation (a divorce, a sick child) and cuts some slack for a period of time. People extending kindness are not characterized by always “going by the book,” but recognize the need to
Organizations which experience freedom from destructive quarrels and disagreement are experiencing peace. This is not to advocate for the absence of The Fruit of the Spirit in Action at the Workplace conflict, because new ideas often involve struggle and compromise. Framing conflict in the context of shared objectives can keep the tenLove..marks a caring and welcoming organization. sion healthy. When times are difficult due to Joy..is the deep satisfaction of doing that which provides meaning. periods of high pressure and significant change, people frequently experience pain. But it is how Peace.. enables creativity and cooperation leading to great new ideas that people respond to this pain that matters. benefit any organization. Peter Frost writes, “What turns pain into toxicity [at work] is when others respond Patience..recognizes the need to consider long term outcomes. to that pain in a harmful rather than healing Kindness..goes beyond “by the book” behavior and recognizes the need to way.”9 Peacemakers can enable creativity and cooperation leading to great new ideas that allow for individual circumstances. benefit any organization. Employees can conGenerosity..leads to long and loyal relationships by leaving something in tribute to the peace of the workplace through avoiding gossip and supporting others, as they the deal for others. work toward the common good of the organiFaithfulness..keeps one’s word in delivering what was promised. zation. Patience
Gentleness.. is humility practiced in spite of a position of power, allowing
for communication and trust. Patience is the recognition of the need to conSelf-Control..is necessary for a healthy workplace; otherwise it self-desider the long term. In our increasingly short structs. term world, there are too many examples of individuals looking for shortcuts, pursuing short term gain at the expense of longer term outcomes, or simply leaving at the first sign of difficulty. allow for individual circumstances. “Kindness may not In a study of 400 executives, 80% said they would have yet caught on within business, but there is plenty decrease spending on long term priorities in order to of evidence that it is a key component of our evolutionmeet short term goals.10 Bankers and borrowers pur- ary heritage, and instrumental in cooperative, collecsued short term gains with sub-prime mortgages and tive behavior.”12 real estate speculation leading to far-reaching economic problems for the world. Generosity In contrast, after experiencing production failures during 2009 and 2010, the leadership of Toyota The habit of giving freely, without expecting anything acknowledged that their focus on speed had contribut- in return would seem to be at odds with the profit maxed to the problems, and made the decision to add time imization goal of most businesses as well as to the task to the planning and design process of new vehicles.11 of career advancement. But when everyone is simply Our world of work is crying out for those who will re- looking out for their own interests, the cut-throat envistore patience to the workplace. ronment stifles collaboration and creativity. Max DePree, long time CEO of Herman Miller
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT wrote, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”13 Some businesses (e.g., Nordstrom, Costco) have demonstrated that generous return policies can actually improve the bottom line. They seek the win/win, recognizing that leaving something in the deal for others may be the best path to a long and loyal relationship. Generosity can permeate an organization when it starts with the leader, but it can have a supportive impact no matter where it is practiced. Faithfulness Faithfulness is demonstrated by sticking with the task to completion, keeping one’s word in delivering what was promised, or simply showing up even when you don’t feel like it. It is often not as glamorous as laying out a vision but it is vital to any kind of work. Raffoni notes that “Strategic planning gets all the cachet and all the ink, but the most creative, visionary strategic planning is useless if it isn’t translated into action.”14 This topic was further developed in the book Execution: “If you don’t know how to execute, the whole of your effort as a leader will always be less than the sum of its parts.”15 The authors define execution as “[the] systematic process of rigorously discussing hows and whats, questioning, and tenaciously following through, ensuring accountability.”16 Faithful commitment is the key to producing results. Gentleness Gentleness is characterized by true humility that does not consider itself too good or too exalted. It is best seen in the hard conversations at work, such as during a
performance review or a necessary termination. It may be seen in the way a teacher challenges a student. These tough conversations are done with a sense of humility in spite of a position of power, allowing for communication and trust and avoiding the degradation of the individual. If gentleness is not exhibited in the workplace, long-lasting loyalty and trust are not developed and change is impeded. In Jim Collins’ classic study of exceptional companies, he identified the characteristics of Level 5 leaders as those with “a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”17 These exceptional leaders exhibited gentleness – but not weakness – in their interactions with others. Self-Control Self-control is the ability to control one’s emo-tions, behavior and desires, and is required in the face of temptations to cut a corner, bend a rule, or act in an outright dishonest way – particularly when there is the significant opportunity for gain. Executives worth hundreds of millions of dollars are now in prison because of the lack of self-control. And this is not restricted to top level executives or politicians. The person at the lowest position in an organization may be tempted to use company resources for personal gain. Self-control is that check on each individual that is necessary for a healthy workplace. Without self-control, workplaces self-destruct. The Study While we have made the argument that all nine characteristics could lead to positive organizational out-
The Methodology Performance appraisal forms from a variety of organizations were evaluated to assess the extent to which they either directly or indirectly measure the fruit of the Spirit in their employees. Those providing the instruments were assured that the name of the company and the specific instruments would be kept confidential. A total of 16 performance appraisals from publicly traded companies (n=4), private companies (n=8) and not-for-profit organizations (n=4) were evaluated. These organizations ranged in size from a few dozen employees to large multi-nationals. Each performance appraisal instrument was content analyzed by three trained raters to identify statements which might correspond to one of the nine characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit. For example, the item “Maintains the dignity of others” was evaluated as a reflection of love as we have defined it here. What we do not know at this point is whether, through a factor analysis, we would find that these nine characteristics are independent, or if there is a correlation between some of the nine items. That further work is called for. In addition, we didn’t have enough data to make comparisons between different types of organizations. For example, it would be interesting to know if not-for-profits are more likely to evaluate certain characteristics relative to for-profit organizations, or whether publicly traded companies are less likely than privately owned companies to measure characteristics such as patience, given such an emphasis on short-term quarterly results. However, even without being able to make such comparisons, our preliminary data suggest some intriguing findings.
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT comes, we were not sure whether and to what extent organizations would be concerned with them. Further, we wonder whether some characteristics might be included more often than others. We believe a good gauge of organizational values would be what they discuss in their performance appraisal process. Consequently, a pilot study is taken to examine a variety of performance appraisal instruments from a broad range of organizations to see to what extent the concepts of the fruit of the spirit might be represented in them (see box The Methodology). Results
ity (46), Faithfulness (84), Gentleness (35), and Selfcontrol (9). These data are graphed in Figure 1. In addition to frequency count for each of the fruit characteristics, we also looked at the simple (yes/ no) question of whether or not a given fruit characteristic was reflected in a given performance appraisal instrument. In this case, the highest score possible for any given characteristic is 16, since we had evaluated 16 performance appraisal instruments. Our data here show a similar, but not identical pattern to Figure 1; each parenthetical number indicates the number of
From a sample of sixteen performance appraisal instruments we found appraisal items corresponding to each of the fruit characteristics, with some represented more frequently than others. Some instruments had more than one item which corresponded to a given fruit characteristic, and so our totals in several cases exceed sixteen. In a few instances one performance appraisal item was identified as reflecting more than one fruit characteristic. For example, “Makes people feel valued” was identified as reflecting both love and kindness, and was counted twice, once in each category. Using a frequency count, we found the following
Figure 2. Number of Appraisals with an Identified Fruit Characteristic
performance appraisals which had at least one item reflecting the associated characteristic: Love (8), Joy (9), Peace (13), Patience (5), Kindness (12), Goodness (13), Faithfulness (16), Gentleness (10), and Self-control (9). These data are portrayed in Figure 2. Discussion
Figure 1. Frequency Count for Fruit Characteristics in Sample Appraisals
number of performance appraisal items (in parentheses), corresponding to the fruit characteristic which they reflected, across the sixteen instruments: Love (17), Joy (10), Peace (40), Patience (8), Kindness (23), Generos-
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None of the performance appraisal instruments that we looked at took a “head on” approach to discussing attitudes in general. Yet in examining the instruments we determined that they tended indirectly to measure many of these nine attributes of the fruit of the Spirit. Faithfulness was the one characteristic that was most frequently measured (see Figure 1). This is perhaps not surprising since faithfulness reflects the extent to which people are thorough in the performance of their responsibilities. Certainly if nothing else, performance
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT appraisals should reflect this attribute! But some of the more interesting findings come from what was absent from our content analysis. Four of the characteristics we examined were relatively infrequently found on our performance appraisal instruments: love, joy, self-control and patience. We do not find it surprising that patience was the least represented – found on less than a third of our performance appraisals, and the only reflecting a total of eight times in those appraisals in which it was mentioned. Patience simply does not seem to fit in this fast-paced, do it yesterday, globally-connected business world, and it certainly does not appear to be valued if performance appraisals are any indicator of what is valued in organizations. And yet, it is not difficult to identify a lack of patience with a whole range of business problems today, from product failures to ethical failures. Perhaps this is a fruit of the Spirit characteristic that should be getting more attention. That love, joy and self-control are relatively under-represented is also not very surprising. None of these terms are usually associated with business except in a negative context. Yet Alderson and McDonnell argue that relationships are really a bottom-line issue and central to any business success.18 Joy is important for a creative and thriving workplace.19 And many of the major business failures of the past decade point directly to a lack of self-control by their leaders. Both the attitudes that are frequently of concern to businesses according to our preliminary analysis, and those that are not, suggest the value of the application of the fruit of the Spirit to a workplace context. Valid in the Workplace, Even for Non-Christians? Too many Christians see a separation between their spiritual lives and their everyday lives, believing this passage in Galatians fits only on the spiritual side of life. What does this have to do with the workplace? Clearly that is a false dichotomy. In fact, Stuart Dugan argues that when we separate our lives in terms of a sacred-secular division, this not only negatively affects our workplaces, but it also undermines our spiritual growth. We lose what we learn intellectually but do not put into practice. And since much of our waking life is spent in the workplace, this must be the place where we put important spiritual teaching into practice. Not doing so causes spiritual atrophy. Some might argue that these nine characteristics represent what should flow from a person whose life is controlled by the Holy Spirit, and hence we would not expect to see them in a person who is not a Christian. These characteristics should flow from the leading of the Spirit, and not be a guide for practice for those who
are not indwelt with God’s spirit. There is some truth in this statement in the context of the passage. But we would argue that every person is an image bearer of God, as the Scripture clearly teaches. As such, the characteristics reflected in the fruit of the Spirit would represent a right model for behavior for all people. Such living is clearly not possible without the empowerment of the Spirit, but such fruit represents God’s intent for each person made in his image. Though attempting to live this way is not the path to salvation, living this way does resonate deeply with every human being and we believe these characteristics can create a very positive discussion for any person in the workplace. This would seem to reflect Paul’s teaching in Romans 2:15 where he argues that the word of God is written on the hearts of every person. In talking with people in the secular workplace, we have found a resonance with the goodness of these characteristics and a place of discussion; these are not recognized as merely “religious” things. Conclusions and Applications The results of this study show that the characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit are present in many performance appraisals. This would seem to indicate an interest in such values and attitudes in the workplace. These attitudes and values have been linked to productivity levels, employee happiness and overall positive organizational outcomes. It would not be difficult to implement this work in an organization. We would recommend that no attempt would be made to make these measures quantitative, at least at the beginning. In a performance review, simply ask the person to identify how he or she believes they have portrayed these characteristics, and prepare for a discussion about them. Encourage an employee to plan to illustrate their own demonstration of these attitudes, both in where they did these things well and where they may have missed the mark. Gaining an opportunity to have this discussion is a first step toward a more rigorous scoring that could come later. The relative lack of some fruit of the Spirit characteristics such as patience, joy, love and self-control calls for reflection on what personnel characteristics are being measured and rewarded in organizations. We would like to find more businesses which hire, promote and develop employees with values and attitudes of love, joy, self-control and patience and see how they differ from those which do not. In addition, we would suggest two other areas for further research. One is to create instruments that better measure these attitudes directly, and compare scores on such measures with overall job or organizational performance ratings. If found to be valid, such
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FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT an instrument might prove effective in the selection process. Secondly, using the characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit might provide promise in focusing the discussion on either selection or appraisal. Discussions of these nine characteristics could be useful in the developmental process, and could be used in employee orientation, training, performance appraisal or 360 review
feedback. Knowing that these attitudes and values are important to managers and human resource departments indicates that there is a market and need for more objective measures to be created, and also for development methods aimed at improving such attitudes and values in the workplace.
Notes
Dan Strumpf, “Toyota Hopes to Spend More Time Developing Vehicles, Less Time Recalling Them,” in the Christian Science Monitor (Associated Press, July 7, 2010). 12 William Baker and Michael O’Malley Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results (AMACOM, 2008), p. 23. 13 Max De Pree, Leadership is an Art (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1989), p. 136. 14 Melissa Raffoni, “Three Keys to Effective Execution,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network, February 26, 2006, http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2008/02/three-keys -to-effective-execut.html (accessed July 8, 2013). 15 Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan and Charles Burck, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, (New York, NY: Crown Business, 2009) p. 20. 16 Ibid. 17 James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Compa-nies Make the Leap--and Others Don’t (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2001) p. 20. 18 Alderson & McDonnell, 1994. 19 Bakke, 2005.
Karen Linkletter and Joseph Maciariello, Introduction to The Drucker Difference, edited by Craig Pearce, Joseph Maciariello & Hideki Yamawaki (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010), p. 2. 4 Wayne Alderson and Nancy Alderson McDonnell, Theory R Management (Nasheville, TN: T. Nelson Publishers, 1994). 5 Cf. David Batstone’s Saving the Corporate Soul-- & (Who Knows?) Maybe Your Own (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003). 6 Mihali Csikszentmihalyi, Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning (New York, NY: Viking, 2003). 7 Bertil Torekull and Ingvar Kamprad, Leading by Design: The IKEA Story (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 1999), p. 10. 8 Dennis Bakke, Joy at Work (Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2005) p. 85. 9 Peter Frost, Toxic Emotions at Work and What You Can Do About Them (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2007), p. 12. 10 Jonathan Wellum, Public address at the Work Research Foundation, 2006. 3
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Albert M. (Al) Erisman is the co-founder and editor of Ethix magazine (www.ethix.org) (since October 1998), where he has interviewed business leaders from around the world on issues of ethics, technology, values, and purpose. He has been a speaker on business ethics in many countries and is engaged in developing a Micro Finance program in the Central African Republic. He is also Executive-in-Residence at the School of Business and Economics, and past Director of the Center for Integrity in Business at Seattle Pacific University. Previously, Al was Director of R&D for computing and mathematics at The Boeing Co. and had been selected as one of 11 inaugural Senior Technical Fellows of The Boeing Company in 1990. Al is on numerous boards, including the Washington Technology Center, the National Academy of Sciences panel on assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gladiator Technology, and the steering committee for the Theology of Work project at Gordon Conwell Seminary, among others. Al holds a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Iowa State University. Denise Daniels is a Professor of Management and the Interim Dean at Seattle Pacific University’s School of Business and Economics. She regularly teaches Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Human Resource Management classes and has been recognized as both the Teacher of the Year and Scholar of the Year. Denise earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management. Denise regularly consults, provides executive coaching services, leadership development training, and workshops on motivation, decision making, workforce retention, and managing diversity.
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CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW AUGUST 2013
CBR PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
Ethical Leadership:
An Invitation to Spiritual Formation and Transformation for the Christian Professional By Doris Gomez Abstract Great leaders – including Christians - who were discovered in unethical activities lose an essential part of their ability to lead. Especially for Christian professionals, the question must not stop at ‘Who is a good leader?’, but rather ‘How should I live?’ and “How do I know right from wrong?’ Looking at the intersection of Christian spiritual formation and its role in leader development, this article seeks to answer these critical questions for the Christian leader by highlighting the importance of the inner spiritual life of the person.
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ETHICAL LEADERSHIP Introduction
The Shadow Side of Leadership
When leaders lose their souls, so do the organizations they lead. From ancient times to today, literature, history, and folklore have chronicled the folly of leaders who, after gaining positions of power, prestige and status, toppled into the abyss of failure. Many are the sobering witnesses of great leaders - including Christians - who were discovered in unethical activities, thus losing an essential part of their ability to lead. Leaders of every discipline and stature from politicians, to law enforcement officials, corporate heads, teachers and clergy have been accused - and found guilty - of wrongdoing. The escalation of high profile scandals and moral failures in recent times in and beyond the world of commerce (see box Moral Leadership Failures) has created a renewed urgency to examine organizations and organizational leadership in an ethical context. The birth of an entire ethics consulting industry points to the recognition of the importance of ethics in organizations and their leaders. Sadly, the increasing commonality of “elite deviance,” or wrongdoing by leaders, has crept into the cultural consciousness and is dulling down moral expectations and sensibilities. Sayles and Smith coined the phrase, “rogue executive”1 to identify a growing class of leaders who seek and exercise the power imbedded in leadership for the sake of personal gain.
The choices and conduct of individuals that result in moral and ethical failure have complex causes and include internal as well as external influences. Palmer contends that individuals “for the most part, do not lack ethical knowledge or convictions. They doubtless took courses on professional ethics and probably received top grades. They gave speeches on ethical issues and more than likely believed their own words. But they had a well-rehearsed habit of holding their own knowledge and beliefs at great remove from the living of their lives.”2 Regardless of the underlying causes, unethical and immoral behavior almost always trigger wide ranging effects that include an erosion of confidence and trust in leaders and the institutions they represent. This is because a leader is “a person who has an unusual degree of power to create the conditions under which other people must l i v e and move and have their being, conditions that can be as illuminating as heaven or as shadowy as hell.”3 Think of teachers, parents, and clergy who create the conditions people must respond to. And what about corporate leaders whose daily decisions are driven by inner dynamics, but who rarely reflect on those motives? As Kets de Vries pointed out, “The road to understanding the dynamics of organizational life is often dependent on understanding what might be termed the inner theater of its key executives: the patterns of conduct that guide their behavior.”4
Good leadership is a composite of sound moral practice coupled with professional skills and knowledge.
Moral Leadership Failures Politics offers bad leaders, such as Richard Nixon. It also offers evil leaders, such as Hitler or Stalin. The Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton certainly provided impetus for a deeper and more critical reflection of ethical standards amongst politicians and those holding the highest office in the land. Religious institutions contribute their own share of fallen leaders: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Ted Haggard, are just a few of the names that come to mind. On the business side of things, the accounting irregularities at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch along with those of Enron and WorldCom are examples of a much larger epidemic of unethical business practices, decisions and behaviors.
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Character: The Inner Theater Increasingly, there have been calls for leadership theorists to explore the inner person of the leader, urging them to strive for wholeness and integrity from the inside out. For example, the theory of authentic leadership5 focuses on the character of the leader as the driver of positive interrelationships with followers. It incorporates other positive leadership approaches, including transformational, charismatic, servant and spiritual leadership. Authentic leaders are deeply aware of how they think and behave and are perceived by others as being aware of their own and others’ values/moral
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ETHICAL LEADERSHIP perspectives, knowledge, and strengths; aware of the context in which they operate; and who are confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, and of high moral character. These leaders are as guided by qualities of the heart as by qualities of the mind. As Warren Bennis noted, “For executive leaders, character is framed by drive, competence, and integrity. Most senior executives have the drive and competence necessary to lead. But too often organizations elevate people who lack the moral compass.”6 Since character is the inner form that makes anyone or anything what it is, so it is character, guided by social expectations, that is the definitive trait of superior leaders.7 It is character that allows leaders to face the challenges, triumphs, failures and temptation of leadership without succumbing to them and responding with unethical and immoral behavior. Leaders who fail are those deficient in traits related to fortitude, integrity, truthfulness, bravery, selflessness, temperance, and moral reasoning. Clearly, mastery of technical or human relations skills alone is insufficient for true leadership. Good leadership is a composite of sound moral practice coupled with professional skills and knowledge. The question – especially for Christian professionals – therefore must not end at ‘Who is a good leader?’ After all it is quite possible to be an ‘effective’ leader while not necessarily a ‘virtuous’ one. Rather it must address ‘How should we live?’ and ‘How do we know right from wrong?’ I am increasingly convinced that the answers to these critical questions can only be found in Christian spiritual formation as a central element in the development, formation and education of Christian professionals. The possibility that human beings can be transformed to such an extent that they become a reflection of Christ is central to the message of the gospel and therefore it must be central to the formation of Christian professionals. Spiritual transformation in the lives of redeemed people is a testimony to the power of the Gospel and it results in an increasing capacity to discern and do the will of God (Rom. 12:2). Christians believe that God is the author and creator of all good things. So it should not surprise us that He also appears at the heart of leadership. The Spiritual Formation of Christian Professionals While ethical codes, training, and policies are now common artifacts of most major organizations, they seem insufficient to consistently alter behaviors. It appears that ethics requires higher-order reasoning skills, objective honesty, accountability to someone
Examples of Spirituality Integration The global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company determined that when companies engage in programs that use spirituality techniques, productivity improves and turnover is substantially reduced. Companies are increasingly hiring chaplains to support employees. For example, Tyson’s Foods has a large number of part-time chaplains at more than 70 sites. Coca-Cola Bottling has chaplains helping employees at more than 50 of their locations. Pizza Hut hires chaplains to guide employees who are struggling with personal problems, and they believe they have reduced the turnover rate by 50 percent. Marketplace Chaplains USA serves over 450 companies in 44 states and in more than 850 cities. The more than 2,400 chaplains provide personal care to more than 500,000 employees and family members, including well-known companies such as McDonalds, Taco Bell and Herr’s. According to one survey of more than 600 employees at Regal Marine, a boat building company, the chaplain’s care program was cited as the #1 benefit. The American Stock Exchange has a Torah study group; Boeing has Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayer groups; Microsoft has an on-line prayer service. There is a “Lunch and Learn” Torah class in the banking firm of Sutro and Company in Woodland Hills, CA. New York law firm Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays and Haroller features Tallmud studies. Koran classes, as well as other religious classes, are featured at defense giant Northrop Gumnan. Marketplace Ministries, based in Dallas, TX serves 268 firms in 35 states. The Fellowship of Companies for Christ International based in Atlanta has 1500 member companies around the world. They encourage Christian business leaders to operate their companies and conduct their personal lives in accordance to biblical principles. They provide biblically-based tools and resources. Academia has caught on quickly over the years and business schools have made a great deal of progress in these areas over the past decade. The number and quality of required and elective business ethics courses has grown, as have the extra-curricular offerings and the recognition by other faculty that ethics is a core business discipline. The University of Virginia, Darden School of Business has developed a simulation program that integrates ethics into business decision-making and is required for first-year MBA students. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has an exemplary program teaching, emphasizing, and integrating ethics in the curriculum, including an option for students to make ethics a “major,” noted on their transcripts. IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Spain features a Department of Business Ethics, as well as an integrated approach to incorporating ethics in the program. At Harvard Business School, a 2003 student-led symposium challenged leaders to embrace values and explore the bridges between spirituality and business.
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ETHICAL LEADERSHIP or something outside of self, social concerns, ongoing self-evaluation, and the abilities to temper emotions, to control impulses, and to delay gratification. There is a noticeable trend in the management world towards accepting and integrating a spiritual dimension into organizational theory and practice. Spirituality is becoming part of mainstream organizational theory and practice even in the secular world. A number of top companies are making explicit attempts to integrate a more spiritual approach into their management practices and many leading business schools have introduced spirituality and ethics into their curricula (see box Examples of Spirituality Integration). Organizational consultants and popular writers such as John Adair, Peter Senge, Tom Peters, Peter Vaill, Steven Covey, and Charles Handy are increasingly explicit about the spiritual dimension to organizational life. For example, Covey states, “I believe that there are parts to human nature that cannot be reached either by legislation or education, but require the power of God to deal with.”8 One author concludes: “The movement to bring spirit and soul to business is no passing fad; it continues to grow and shows no sign of abating. Clearly something significant is stirring the corporate world.”9 Most Christians believe that God’s spirit works through all people by what is termed ‘Common Grace’ – enabling them to do good to others and change for the better. In this way spirituality includes the operation of the human spirit, but goes beyond to involve a relationship between the inner person and God. Although most religious traditions describe and proscribe some process of formation, spiritual formation has been a term mostly utilized by historic forms of Christianity.10 At its core, spiritual transformation is the process by which Christ is formed in us …for the glory of God, for the abundance of our own lives, and for the sake and benefit of others (Gal. 4:19; Rom. 8:29, 12:1-2). Consequently, Christian professionals must be aware that we are part of an interconnected whole and are here for the sake and the well-being of others. If we want to change that whole, we must change ourselves. Nouwen observes: “It is not enough for (Christian leaders) of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is very valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is, are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s incarnate Word and to taste fully God’s infinite goodness?”11 The goal of Christian spiritual formation is, according to Willard, “an obedience or conformity to Christ.”12
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Change and Spiritual Discipline The Bible overflows with stories of human change. When we compare the change experiences of the people of Israel as described in the Old Testament with the parables and examples of human change in the New Testament we find a remarkable consistency and congruence. Ever since the fall, God has continually worked to cause his people to realize their utter dependence on him. He does this by bringing us to the point of human extremity, where we have no place to turn, but him. As Paul explains in his letter to the Corinthians: We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor.1:8-9)
Human pride often holds back change. It is often only when we accept our own inability to solve the situation that our pride is broken and we look to God for change. Oftentimes, the greatest leverage we can create for ourselves is the pain that comes from inside knowing that we have failed to live up to our own standards. David was convicted by the visit of the prophet Nathan and wrote: “My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear” (Ps. 38:4). Nehemiah cried out: “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you” (Neh.1:6). While outward obedience to Christ appears to be something that we can do in our own power — a cleaning of the outside of the cup (Matt. 23:25–26) — inner heart change is only possible in and through relationship with God. Christian leaders and professionals have to be informed deeply by the spiritual disciplines that the Christian faith provides us with. While we cannot transform ourselves into the image of Christ, we can create the conditions in which spiritual transformation takes place. This is where spiritual practices or disciplines come in. Spiritual disciplines are concrete activities that we engage in so as to make ourselves available for the work that only God can do. This is what Paul is referring to when he appeals to the Christians in Rome to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Rom.12:1) He is saying that we can be intentional about creating the conditions for transformation by engaging disciplines that help us surrender ourselves to God – not just in theory but in reality. As Foster describes it, “[Spiritual] disciplines are the main way we offer our bodies up to God as a living sacrifice. We are doing what we can do
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ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
While we cannot transform ourselves into the image of Christ, we can create the conditions in which spiritual transformation takes place. This is where spiritual practices or disciplines come in. with our bodies, our minds, our hearts. God then take this simple offering of ourselves and does with it what we cannot do, producing within us deeply ingrained habits of love and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”17 (see box Spiritual Disciplines). It is God’s will and delight that we actively resist being conformed to this world and seek instead to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The Greek word nous (translated mind in Rom.12:2) includes but goes far beyond intellectual or cognitive knowing. It denotes the seat of reflective consciousness and en-
compasses a person’s faculties of perception and understanding as well as the patterns of feeling, judging and determining that shape our actions and responses in the world. Thus, any approach to transformation that seeks to bring about real change must go beyond merely grasping information at the cognitive level. It needs the full knowledge that impacts our deepest inner orientations and trust structures, false-self patterns, and any obstacles that prevent us from fully surrendering to God. This kind of change involves clear teaching about
Spiritual Disciplines There is generally agreement that the process of spiritual formation is initiated by God, facilitated by the response in faith by the believer, worked out in both personal and communal contexts with the ultimate goal of holiness as the believer is formed into the image of Christ. However, even though the process of formation is always initiated by God, the person being formed needs to consent to the formational process through the commitment to practice what is called the “spiritual disciplines” of Christianity.13 These historic and biblical disciplines of the spiritual life facilitate spiritual formation and are categorized as:14 (a) Inward disciplines: meditation, prayer, fasting, and study (b) Outward disciplines: simplicity, solitude, submission and service (c) Corporate disciplines: confession, worship, guidance, and celebration N.T. Wright in his book, After you Believe, states that the aim of the Christian life – the goal we are meant to be aiming for once we have come to faith – is the life of a fully formed, fully flourishing Christian character. Proposing a Christian virtuebased answer to the question “How shall we live?” he points to a virtuous circle containing the following five elements: 15 (a) Scripture (b) Stories (c) Examples (d) Community (e) Practices A spiritual life and Christian character, according to Nouwen,16 cannot be formed without discipline, practice, and accountability - anything that helps us slow down and order our times, desires and thoughts on a regular basis and helps us to create space for God in our soul. These include the discipline of the: (a) Heart (introspection and contemplative prayer) (b) Book (reading of sacred Scripture and spiritual writings) (c) Church (community of faith and relationship with the people of God)
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ETHICAL LEADERSHIP the nature of the Christian life, concrete practices that help us internalize truth in ways that change how we respond in the world, and community that supports and catalyzes the process.18 Conclusion The temptation to compromise basic Christian values – love, community, truth-telling, confession and reconciliation, silent listening and waiting on God for discernment – for the sake of expedience, is very great. In a high performance culture (both secular culture and religious) holding to deep spiritual values in the face of the pressure to perform – whether performance is measured by numbers, new buildings or the latest innovation – is one of the greatest challenges of spiritual leadership. Palmer reminds us that a “leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside him or her self, inside his or her consciousness,
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lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.”19 So, the best and worst thing we bring to others and our leadership is our own self. The most important leadership tool ultimately is the leader as a person and his or her makeup, and yet this is what seems to get the least amount of attention. Mostly, we focus on professional skills and knowledge instead. The challenges of leadership are both practical and deeply personal. After all is said and done, after all the leadership theory and tools have been studied, leaders ultimately lead according to who they are.20 Our inward turn, therefore, is not idle self-absorption but is, in fact, critical to our effectiveness as leaders. Leaders must make a courageous decision to diligently examine their hearts, in order to identify areas of needed change and growth. Good leaders do not just focus on the development of their outer competencies required of them at the expense of their inner life. Good leaders recognize the need for both.
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ETHICAL LEADERSHIP Notes
Leonard R. Sayles and Cynthia J. Smith, The Rise of the Rogue Executive: How Good Companies Go Bad and How to Stop the Destruction ( Upper Saddle River: FT Press, 2005) 2 Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (Hoboken: Jossey-Bass, 2009), p. 7. 3 Ibid., p. 9. 4 Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane: Essays on Irrational Organizations and Their Leaders (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 1995), xxi. 5 Bruce J. Avolio and William L. Garrdner, “Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership,” The Leadership Quarterly 16 (2005), pp. 315-338. 6 Warren Bennis, “The Leadership Advantage,” Leader to Leader 12 (1999), accessed January 28, 2013. http://www. internetmasterycenter.com/articles/self-development/leadership-advantage.php. 7 Os Guinness, Character Counts (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), p. 12. 8 Steven Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1989), p. 319. 9 Paul Wong, “Spirituality and Meaning at Work”, International Network on Personal Meaning, accessed January 28, 2013. http://www.meaning.ca/archives/presidents_columns/pres_col_sep_2003_meaning-at-work.htm. 10 Kees Waaijman, Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods. 1
(Leuven: Peeters, 2002). 11 Henry Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992), p. 42. 12 Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: Navigator Press, 2002), p. 22. 13 Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper, 1989), p.106. 14 Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (New York: Harper Collins, 1998) 15 N.T. Wright, After you Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: Harper One, 2010). 16 Henri Nouwen, Michael J. Christensen, and Rebecca J. Laird, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith (New York: Harper One, 2006). 17 Richard Foster, “What we believe about spiritual formation,” Transforming Center, accessed January 31, 2013. http://www.transformingcenter.org/in/about/whatwe-believe.shtml. 18 Ibid. 19 Parker J. Palmer, “Leading from within,” in Insights on Leadership: Service, Stewardship, Spirit, and Servant-leadership, ed. L. C. Spears (New York: Wiley, 1996), p. 200. 20 Doris Gomez, “The Heart of a Leader: Connecting Leading and the Inner Life,” Inner Resources for Leaders, accessed January 31, 2013.
About the Author Dr. Gomez currently serves as Interim Dean of the School of Business & Leadership at Regent University. Originally from Austria, she earned a master’s at the University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna and a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership at Regent University’s School of Business & Leadership. Prior to a career in academia she was engaged in the global business world and spent many years in global trade, retailing, manufacturing and consulting.
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CBR BOOK REVIEW
CHRIST AND BUSINESS CULTURE
CHRIST AND BUSINESS CULTURE
By Kam-Hon Lee, Dennis McCann, and MaryAnn Ching Yuen Published by The Center for the Study of Religion and Chinese Society, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013)
A Book Review by Kwok Tung Cheung The authors of this volume suggest that a behavioral typology based on a view of Christian relational ethics and negotiation styles may enable Christian executives to reflect critically on ethical behavior and guide their thoughts toward more effective responses to ethical challenges.
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ntegrity is the foundation of business. But in a marketplace that is highly competitive and sometimes hostile to moral aspirations, how are Christian executives to remain faithful to their Christian values? Christ and Business Culture by Lee, McCann, & Yuen reports the results of a research project that spanned more than a decade. It is a very interesting and valuable book. The analysis is derived from the interviews of 119 Christian executives in Hong Kong with respect to 539 critical incidents that illustrate how they responded when they sensed their integrity was on the line. Of particular challenge are those from mainland China, to which Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed back in 1997. The timing of this study means there were apparent British influence and Western values behind the business practices of the interviewees, some of whom also received their education in the West before their return to Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the China market had been opening up and, unfortunately, it came with widespread corruption. This created ethically challenging environments for the interviewees who have Christian values. In this sense, this book can easily prove to be the best of its kind for Western Christian readers who want to do business in China or to know what is going on there. The study makes use of Niebuhr’s framework on Christ and culture1, and also the Negotiation Styles Framework in the negotiation literature (cf. Lewicki, et. al.2). When putting these two frameworks together, the
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authors claim, the new integrated framework enabled them to understand the Christian executives’ responses to ethical challenges and their implications for profitableness. Five behavior types are identified in the Negotiation Styles: Avoiding, Yielding, Integrating, Compromising, and Dominating. Corresponding to them are the five types in the Niebuhr typology: Christ against business culture, Christ of business culture, Christ above business culture, Christ and business culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of business culture. Interestingly, the authors treat both as virtually equivalent and the book is predominantly written in terms of Niebuhr’s typology after Chapter 6. In addition, the authors would go beyond the empirical or descriptive framework to draw normative implications, such that the book may serve as “an empirical study as well as a pastoral guidebook, both academic and practical” (p. 20)3. Therefore, Chapters 5 and 6 are on the findings of positive science and Chapters 7 to 11 on the normative reflection for each type. The theoretical construct of the book, however, has obvious drawbacks. First, it is not clear that negotiation styles can exactly map onto Niebuhr’s typology. For example, Yielding is mapped onto Christ of culture. The concept of Yielding implies that the agent knows that some practice is not to his/her best interests but he/she still accepts it. Christ of culture, quoting Niebuhr in the book, is “recognition of a fundamental agreement between Christ and culture” in which “Jesus often appears
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CHRIST AND BUSINESS CULTURE as a great hero of human culture history” and in Jesus “the aspirations of men toward their values are brought to a point of culmination” (p. 41). To Niebuhr, Christ and culture are thought to be so converged that, roughly speaking, you are very ethical and Christian when you follow the practices in the culture. It does not therefore make much sense to say that the Christian businessperson in this case “yields” to the business culture, as if some Christian ideals were sacrificed. A similar concern is found in Type 5, Christ the transformer of culture/Dominating. In this idea, human institutions and customs in a culture are seen as fallen and in need of redemption. Human culture should become “a transformed human life in and to the glory of God” (p. 196). If the fallen business culture is transformed for the glory of God, it will be restored to its original state of creation without evils like greed and injustice. But the idea of Dominating in negotiation is that the two parties wind up in a win-lose situation. Why is the business culture losing when it is transformed and restored to its original beauty, e.g., market efficiency, equitable distribution of resources, etc.? Negotiation theory sees the loser as one of the negotiating parties but not the system. In this sense it cannot capture the idea of Christ the transformer of culture.
This raises the question about the nature of business culture. In the discussion about Christ and business culture, does business culture refer to the essential practices in free market capitalism, or the particular customs and practices in dealing with, e.g., corrupt Chinese, which is a major theme of the book? These two may invite totally different treatments. As Logue shows, belief in free market capitalism may serve as grounds against bribery, primarily because bribery hurts market efficiency4. Accordingly, if a Christian businessperson is convinced that free market capitalism is the best way to do business and to promote common good in the world, she would refuse to pay bribes. On the one hand, this is Type 1, Christ against culture/Avoiding, but on the other, this means following the laws and regulations for free market capitalism, which should then be Type 2, Christ of culture/Yielding! Another confusion of business culture is in Type 5, Christ the transformer of culture. The culture that is being transformed or converted here should be human institutions and customs in business. Therefore, we should expect the stories to have the following two elements: (a) the interviewee insists on doing what Christian ethics requires, and (b) the institutions and customs in business in question are eventually redeemed or
Source: Kam Hon Lee. Illustration by See-ming Lee/SML Universe
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CHRIST AND BUSINESS CULTURE improved. However, more than half of the examples in Chapter 11 on Type 5 lack the second element. For example, the first incident reported is about a Christian who decided not to give bribes and instead to rely on God’s providence, which at the end, he believes, protected him from becoming less competitive. There is no indication that he attempted to change the corrupt business practice and culture. In another example, the authors told of a Christian businessperson evangelizing in China. Yes, there is conversion, but not a conversion of the business culture. A final issue with the theoretical framework relates to the authors’ claim that there is no priority among the five types of responses, that they are “equally effective witnesses for Christ” (pp. 36-37, 258), and “the same Christian executive may make different choices when handling different incidents” (p. 256). In the concluding chapter, the authors even give an example of the same person, a toy manufacturer, displaying at various times all five different responses when interacting with the same party, a customs office in China (pp. 256-258). According to Niebuhr, different types in his analysis are characterized by different schools of theological thoughts in church history. It is not easy to judge all of them. Therefore one cannot say, as the authors claim, “This is the Christian answer” (p. 231). Given that the Niebuhr typologies have been turned into types of responses pertaining to different situations, the book’s approach appears capricious and borders on situational ethics. The toy manufacturer, without giving Christian ethics any serious thoughts, acted in a way he thought to be a faithful response to a situation. That may be the
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kwok Tung (Daniel) Cheung teaches in the Department of Philosophy, University of Dayton, Ohio. A Hong Kong native, Dr. Cheung specializes in business ethics and epistemology, with interests in metaphysics, ethics and Christian philosophy. Dr. Cheung received his Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington.
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real reason why he switched among types when expedient. This probably is not the reason that Niebuhr had in mind for choices among his typology, although he believes that a theologian may display some degrees of different types of behavior. In fact, that a person easily changes behaviors under different situations could be an indication of a lack of character, or spiritual principles in this case. Some scholars have argued that the concept of character may have no scientific ground in social psychology5. Many studies have shown that a person may act in certain ways due to implicit situational cues, regardless of their usual characters. It may be helpful to point out that a study similar to Christ and Business Culture has been done for American Christian (Evangelical) CEOs by Nash6. Nash classifies the CEOs into three types, namely the Generalists who think that there is no conflict between faith and business practices; the Justifiers who think that being religious and ethical is always good business; and the Seekers who think that there are such conflicts and they seek to find solutions all the time. Nash also concludes that there is a covenantal ethic displayed by many of these CEOs. Though her approach was less sophisticated than Niebuhr’s typology, the line-up of the stories in the classification is more convincing. The concerns with the theoretical approach aside, Christ and Business Culture provides a unique window for many to learn about the day-to-day struggles of Christian businesspeople in Hong Kong and China. The stories speak for themselves and many in business can relate to what is being said in the book. This is a book that will appeal to Christians, whether they are scholars or in the marketplace.
Notes H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. 1951. 2 Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders and John M. Minton, Essentials of Negotiation, second edition. Boston: Irwin/McGraw-Hill. 2001. 3 All page numbers cited refer to Christ and Business Culture. 4 Niles C. Logue, “Cultural Relativism or Ethical Imperialism? Dealing with Bribery Across Cultures” (2005). Accessed http://www.cbfa.org/Logue.pdf 5 See for example, John Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, and Gilbert Harman, “No Character or Personality,” Business Ethics Quarterly 13(1) (2003): 87-94. 6 Laura L. Nash, Believers in Business. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. 1994. 1
CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW AUGUST 2013
CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES Review Process
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Each proposal or paper is reviewed by one of CBR’s editors and, if it is judged suitable for this publication, is then further evaluated: experience-based papers by the Editorial Board; and research-based papers by at least one independent referee for double-blind peer review in addition to the Editorial Board. Based on their recommendation, the editors then decide whether the paper should be accepted as is, revised or rejected.
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CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES
notes, etc.) must be double-spaced and in 12 point Times Roman font. d. Except as listed below, avoid all typographic embellishments, including bold, italics, underline, centering, type ornaments (dingbats), and words typed in all capitals. e. Type one space after periods, colons, and semicolons. f. Endnotes rather than parenthetical citations should be used; refer to the Chicago Manual for formatting guidelines. Use superscript for the endnote numbers in the text and for the endnote numbers themselves. In the text, no space should precede the endnote number. In the endnotes, no period or space should follow the endnote number. g. Book, journal, magazine, or film titles should be italicized rather than underlined. h. Left justify all text; do not full justify. Begin new paragraphs by typing a hard return and indent each paragraph .5 inch using a tab; do not use the space bar to indent. Do not insert extra space between paragraphs. Extracts should be indented from the left margin .5 inch using the indent command in your word processing program. i. If the manuscript is divided into parts, type each heading in bold. If your manuscript is divided into subparts, type each subheading in italics. Do not number headings or subheadings. Type all headings and subheadings in upper and lower case; avoid all capitals, underlining, or other embellishments. j. Consult the Chicago Manual for proper capitalization (for example, Bible and Scripture are capitalized, but biblical and scriptural are not).
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CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW AUGUST 2013