Book Review: Business for the Common Good

Business for the Common Good: A Christian Vision for the Marketplace

 

By Kenman L. Wong and Scott B. Rae (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011. 288 pp.)

Kenman Wong, professor of business ethics at Seattle Pacific University, teaches courses in the fields of ethics and microfinance. A graduate of Biola University, the University of Washington, and the University of Southern California (where he received his doctorate in social ethics), Wong as also authored Medicine & the Marketplace, Beyond Integrity (also with Scott B. Rae), and many articles published in scholarly journals.

Scott B. Rae serves as professor of biblical studies-Christian ethics at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. A graduate of Southern Methodist University, Dallas Theological Seminary, and the University of Southern California (where he received his doctorate in social ethics), Rae has published many books and scholarly articles in the field of ethics.

Another Way of Doing Business

The School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University teaches that the purpose of business is to serve the common good.

This philosophy, titled "Another Way of Doing Business," has, in turn, inspired SBE scholars to research and explore supporting and complementary ideas. As such, Business for the Common Good is the perfect companion to SBE Dean Jeff Van Duzer’s Why Business Matters to God.

Where Van Duzer’s Why Business Matters to God focuses on the theoretical justification for the intrinsic value of business, Wong’s book shows practical examples of how leaders in the business world could implement Christian principles in the marketplace.

 

Increasing Profits, or Profitable Service?

Stated another way, Wong’s and Rae’s book furthers scholarship on the principle of approaching business from the position of service.

Typically, business is considered an enterprise whose sole purpose is increasing profits. When pursued from this limited perspective, business is capable of — maybe even conditioned to — harming stakeholders in an effort to appease shareholders. We see this play out in the business press in myriad ways:

• The potential arises for customers to receive an inferior product as companies cut corners to save money.
• Some employees suffer from unsustainably low wages, or poor and unsafe working conditions.
• The environment serves as a dumpster for growing amounts of waste and pollution.

 

Transforming the Status Quo

Wong and Rae understand the necessity of net earnings. Yet they question the lofty pedestal on which most business people place profit.

In suggesting that business exists for a greater purpose, the authors argue that "work is transformational service to God in his new creation" (52). Instead of entering the marketplace in order to attain the necessary resources to live, Christians might operate in the marketplace to provide resources for others.

In other words, transformational service means that business exists both for the provision of resources for others and for the moral formation that service provides for the worker.

Through diverse topics, such as globalization, workplace ethics, management philosophy, marketing, and the environment, the authors tackle some of the difficulties inherent in transforming much of the status quo in modern-day business practice — without presenting a full-scale condemnation of contemporary business.

In fact, Wong and Rae assert themselves as pro-business. But they also suggest that the intrinsic value of business, which they defend so rigorously, can be diminished if the prevailing model of profit maximization is the "invisible hand" that guides all future action.

 

Creating Culture From the Top

If you run a small business, manage a group of employees, or carry executive status, Business for the Common Good offers valuable insights into the ways you can influence your company’s culture for the good of society.

For those who are in a more-limited role of organizational leadership, the lessons in this book may not be immediately applicable, but may serve as a guide for the types of companies for which you might want to work.

Regardless, Business for the Common Good supplies a valuable resource for readers interested in the intersection between faith and work, and specifically Christian theology and business, on a practical level.

Originally published at the Center for Integrity in Business.

Book Review: Why Business Matters to God

Why Business Matters to God (And What Still Needs to Be Fixed)

By Jeff Van Duzer (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010. 206 pp)

Jeff Van Duzer is the dean of Seattle Pacific University’s School of Business and Economics. Previously, he practiced law for more than 20 years with a large international law firm concentrating in commercial transactions and environmental law. Van Duzer received his J.D. from Yale Law School. He writes and speaks frequently in both church and professional settings.

Separate Spheres, Like the Sun and Moon

 

In most home, work, and church settings, a clear disconnect exists between Christianity and business. In general, the average Christian relegates his or her faith to the personal sphere. Beliefs and practices resulting from Christian tradition are channeled primarily within the family with the purpose of creating moral individuals and healthy relationships.

When an application of faith to business is pursued, one of two extreme postures is typically taken: Christians understand the business world to be in conflict with the life of faith, thereby pursuing their work lives independent of their spiritual lives. Or, they see little or no moral tension between economic and spiritual pursuits, resulting in “business as usual” with no resulting changes in actions or outlook.

The pulpit, similarly, avoids mingling these two topics. Apart from rhetoric encouraging parishioners to live Monday through Friday in an identical manner to Sunday, pastors rarely mention the theological merit of work. For this reason and certainly many more, numerous Christians value business for its instrumental contributions to “morally elevated” occupations such as church, missionary, and nonprofit work.

Business as Service

 

Van Duzer questions these assumptions in Why Business Matters to God. While value certainly exists in the contributions business makes to the nonprofit sector, Van Duzer contends that business in and of itself contains intrinsic value.

Leaning theologically on the Reformed rubric of God’s activity in the world — creation, fall, redemption, and New Creation — as well as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s classic work in Christ and Culture, Van Duzer suggests a new framework in which to imagine business. He recommends supplanting the generally accepted business practice of maximizing shareholder value with a “business-as-service model,” which he contends is more closely aligned with God’s purposes for economic enterprise.

What is the “business-as-service model?” Van Duzer defines it simply when he writes,

“The purpose of business is still to serve in two key aspects: (1) to serve the community by providing goods and services that will enable the community to flourish, and (2) to serve employees by providing them with opportunities to express at least a portion of their God-given identity through meaningful and creative work” (114).

In a certain sense, Van Duzer’s business-as-service model resides within the realm of ideas reacting against the dominant view of maximizing shareholder value such as stakeholder theory, social entrepreneurship, conscious capitalism, and creative capitalism; and on top of new ownership structures, like the B Corporation, that facilitate a legal framework from which to pursue multiple bottom lines. More importantly, though, Van Duzer’s position re-imagines business through a practical theological lens.

The Messy Middle

 

Whether business models itself in service or shareholder value, it operates in what Van Duzer calls the “messy middle,” a state on the theological timeline between the resurrected Jesus and the promises of glorified perfection yet to come. The Jewish and Christian scriptures promise a perfect, future city that exhibits all that God originally intended for humanity. Yet brokenness keeps us from fulfilling these promises in our current time and context. For Christians, a perfect application of the “business-as-service model,” therefore, is impossible until the full Shalom in Jesus’ return is made manifest.

Although work is currently tainted by the fall, it presents Christians in the business world with the opportunity to exercise both creative and redemptive work. God first illustrated the calling of humanity to engage in creative work through the naming of the animals by Adam. Similarly, business people in modern times engage in creative work when they develop new software, begin an entrepreneurial venture, or engage in other additive ventures.

Intermingled and as equally important, business also focuses on fixing and restoring that which is fractured, a necessary measure because of the full import of the fall. While the “messy middle” hinders the full realization of a perfected business-as-service model, redemptive and creative work offers Christian business people a navigable compass in our less-than-perfect world.

God’s Economy: The Household

 

Theologically speaking, Van Duzer’s business model emphasizes the community over the individual. Typically, when managing decisions, the modern business person applies a self-interested ethic often under the umbrella of consequentialism. Authors such as Milton Friedman continue to cite — perhaps incorrectly — Adam Smith’s invisible hand as the root of all actions in the free market.

Business as service, on the other hand, stresses the importance of other people. In this way, business serves the economy, or better translated: the household. Just as the triune God exists not as an individual but as three persons in relational community, so too business exists in relational community with the rest of the economy and with other important, mediating institutions of culture.

Theologian, M. Douglas Meeks writes in God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and the Political Economy,

“All the persons of the triune community have their own characteristics and their own tasks. Yet they are constituted as persons precisely by their relationships with other persons of the community. The same should be said for human economic community. There is in reality no such thing as a radically individual and isolated human being. We are what we are as a result of being constituted by our relationships with other members of the communities in which we live. All social goods are given to us communally.”

A theologically minded Christian in the marketplace must remember that his or her actions affect the local community and the global community. Where self-interested or narrowly focused decisions directed toward increasing shareholder wealth often neglect other stakeholders, the business-as-service framework offers an important and theologically grounded foundation to serve the broader community.

Why Business Matters to God

 

God created work and declared that it was good. Why Business Matters to God contends with the schismatic notion that business and Christian practices reside in divergent spheres.

Where the popular ideologies suggest that the positive nature of business subsists in its instrumental value — its capability in funding work that actually matters — Jeff Van Duzer asserts that business, when understood as service to the global community, maintains intrinsic value — significance by its created purpose to both create and restore a hurting world.

Whether your occupation involves managing a large company or you just recently entered the job world, this book is a must-read for those interested in the relationship between Scripture, work, and business.

Originally published at http://spu.edu/depts/sbe/cib/reviews/review-why-business-matters-to-god.asp