Ethics Articles
Articles: Work & Business Ethics
>> = Important Articles; ** = Major Articles
Of Business Schools and Theological Seminaries (Christian Post, 050505)
The Value of a Good Day’s Work (Christian Post, 060905)
Study: Bad Bosses Abound in U.S. (Foxnews, 070102)
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GUIDELINES RELATING TO SELECTED BUSINESS AND FUNDING ETHICS
Living has always focused on material possessions. We should be reminded that more is said in Scripture about material possessions and how Christians are to view and use them, than about almost any other subject. The local church is God’s primary context for communicating and maintaining accountability in the area of material effects.! Trust should be in God, not in self or what one owns or possesses} It is tempting to be dishonest, lack integrity, or to be hypocritical in the area of possessions? One can be in bondage and not know it.4 Stewardship is key5 and the way in which Christians use their material possessions determines whether or not they are living in the will of God.6 It is the Holy Spirit that empowers us to exercise self--control! Spiritual leaders are responsible for the communication of God’s view on material possessions and their impact on our faith and trust in Him.8 Believing that Christ is Coming King is strong motivation for the follower of Jesus Christ to view and use their possessions from a Biblical persective.9
Wherever Christianity is active, some people will attempt to use the Christian message to benefit themselves.10 When faith is placed in wealth so as to abuse and misuse other people, or so as to accumulate it, these people must be warned that they are violating Biblical principles and will eventually be judged severely by God Himself.!! Economic assistance and our witness are greatly affected by our work ethic.!2 Christians may face criticism or even retaliation when their commitment to do God’s will conflicts with others’ materialistic value systems.!3 Let us be on guard against self-deception as well as rationalizations when living in an affluent society.14
Pastoral Workers - Second Income Issues
Scripture tells us in I Cor. 6: 12 that “Everything is permissible for me - but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me - but I will not be mastered by anything.” Nobody should seek his own good but the good of others.
As a pastor, your “private life” is not exclusively your own. Should you engage in certain kinds of activities or hold certain positions, a conflict of interest may arise that would compromise your ministry and the furtherance of God’s word. For example, participating in a second income business where you solicit funds from the congregation could put you into a damaging compromise. Since each individual’s situation is different, you should seek direction from your local Board of Elders and your District Superintendent, prior to starting a secondary business or seeking additional employment.
Using Congregations for Commercial Gain
Many possible situations can arise within a church, regarding business transactions involving church adherents, leadership, etc. In many cases some very appropriate kinds of ongoing business transactions can occur. In other cases, business solicitations or transactions can occur which are detrimental to the church body. We want to affirm the elders’ role in overseeing the spiritual needs of the congregation and in managing church funding issues. In this regard, the Board of Elders is responsible to monitor and serve the congregation from the effects of those who might desire to use the church inappropriately for commercial gain. Pastors and elders are to set an example in this area, which is above reproach.
Gambling
No Alliance church or ministry shall knowingly receive government, foundation or program monies from the proceeds of gambling. Elders’ Boards are responsible before God to give oversight and guidelines for church funding issues, including issues concerning gambling.
Educational and Teaching Component
There is not sufficient space in this policy to reference a number of core teaching and educational materials on the above financial ethics topics. Churches are encouraged to obtain additional background information from their district offices.
1 New Testament
2 Proverbs 3:5,6; Deuteronomy 8:17,18; Job 31:24-28
3 Acts 5:1-10 ,
4 Matthew 6:24 .
5 Matthew 25:14-30; 1 Cor. 4:1,2; Luke 16:10-12
6 Acts 2-6; Philippians 4:11-13
7 2 Timothy 1:7; Galatians 5:16,17,22,23; Proverbs 23:4
8 The apostles’ example and personal experience
9 2 Timothy 3:1-2a, 4b-5
10 Acts 8:9-25
11 James 5:1
12 I Thessalonians 4:11-12; 2 Thessalonians 3:6; 2 Thessalonians 3:IOb
13 Paul’s experience in Ephesus (Acts 19:23-41)
14 Revelation 3:17-18
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630.2.4 Life In The Workplace
As Christians we are called to be servants of all. This norm is equally applicable to employer and employee (Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-41). Our concern for justice is primarily a concern to do justice and only secondarily a concern to obtain justice.
We believe that all persons have the privilege to be gainfully employed irrespective of sex, race, colour, national origin, or creed (Romans 10:12).
We recognize the privilege of employees to organize for their betterment. Oath-bound secret pacts or acts of violence designed to violate or defend their rights cannot be condoned. We also recognize the right of employees to remain independent of such organizations.
As Christians we do not view management and labour as necessarily hostile to each other. They need not bring distrust and hostility to their place of work or the negotiating table. We resist the exploiting of people or seeing them merely as economic units. We discourage rigid confrontation and favour a problem-solving approach to disagreements.
We endeavour to make our witness effective where we work, remembering that as Christian employees we are responsible first to God and then to our employer and the organization. As Christian employers we have a responsibility to deal fairly and kindly with our employees, preserving the witness of Christian character in both word and deed (Matthew 7:12; Colossians 3:17).
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Warren G. Bennis and James O’Toole agree that business schools are “on the wrong track.” Bennis and O’Toole are in a position to know, since Bennis serves as University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles and O’Toole is Research Professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations. Together, they combine years of expertise and experience and their indictment of business schools is direct and unambiguous.
In “How Business Schools Lost Their Way,” published in the April 2005 edition of the Harvard Business Review, these two authors address what they see as the central failing of graduate schools supposedly committed to preparing business leaders--these schools hire faculty who have little or no experience in the actual world of business.
Bennis and O’Toole are well-known in the worlds of management and leadership. Bennis, who also serves as founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at USC, is the author of a series of best-selling works on leadership. O’Toole is an expert in organizational dynamics. In this article, they get right to the heart of the problem they so skillfully diagnose.
In the academic world, the automatic reflex to any call for change is a review of the curriculum. Nevertheless, Bennis and O’Toole are convinced that problems with the curriculum are “the effect, not the cause of what ails the modern business school.”
In their view, “The actual cause of today’s crisis in management education is far broader in scope and can be traced to a dramatic shift in the culture of business schools. During the past several decades many leading B schools have quietly adopted an inappropriate, and ultimately self-defeating, model of academic excellence. Instead of measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their graduates, or by how well their faculties understand important drivers of business performance, they measure themselves almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research.”
This approach, identified by the authors as the “scientific model,” is based in the belief that business is primarily an academic discipline. “In fact, business is a profession, akin to medicine and the law,” the authors correct, “and business schools are professional schools-or should be.” This statement is not intended to diminish the importance nor to lower the status of business as a professional discipline. “Like other professions, business calls upon the work of many academic disciplines. For medicine, these disciplines include biology, chemistry, and psychology; for business, they include mathematics, economics, psychology, philosophy, and sociology. The distinction between a profession and an academic discipline is crucial. In our view, no curricular reforms will work until the scientific model is replaced by a more appropriate model rooted in the special requirements of a profession.”
Bennis and O’Toole are clearly on to something of importance here. Attention to the curriculum without understanding the faculty factor amounts to little more than rearranging the furniture. After all, the faculty teach the curriculum, and faculty expectations drive everything from evaluations of student performance to evaluation of faculty peers.
Bennis and O’Toole get right to the heart of the problem. “Virtually none of today’s top-ranked business schools would hire, let alone promote, a tenure-track professor whose primary qualification is managing an assembly plant, no matter how distinguished his or her performance. Nor would they hire professors who write articles only for practitioner reviews, like this one. Instead, the best B schools aspire to the same standards of academic excellence that hard disciplines embrace-an approach sometimes waggishly referred to ‘physics envy.’”
This concern is immediately transferable to the rest of the university, where, as these authors understand, the university is understood to exist “primarily to support the scholar’s interests.” Armed with their own experience in the academy, these authors understand the equation. “For the most part, universities accept this arrangement and the intellectual premise on which it rests: namely, that universities help society advance by supporting scientists who push back the boundaries of knowledge. They leave the practical implications to others.”
Faculty publications reveal what professors believe to be important--or, at the very least, what they believe their peers understand to be important. Practitioners in the field, however, are not likely to be impressed with much of what business professors write and produce. Bennis and O’Toole cite a “renowned CEO” who has referred to academic publishing as a “vast wasteland” in terms of usefulness in business. Among business professors, the pressure to publish in fields of strictly quantitative analysis is powerful and seductive, even though much of this “research” has little application in the real world. Getting articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals, regardless of practical value, is one of the necessary rungs on the professor’s ladder toward tenure. Writing for publications such as the Harvard Business Review--considered to be a journal for “practitioners”--does not impress tenure committees.
Bennis and O’Toole aim their sights at the hiring and tenure processes. “Deans may say they want practitioner-oriented research, but their schools reward scientific research designed to please academics. By recruiting and promoting those who publish in discipline-based journals, business schools are creating faculties filled with individuals whose main professional aspiration is a career devoted to science.”
The authors delivered a devastating blow in one concise sentence: “Today, it is possible to find tenured professors of management who have never set foot inside a real business, except as customers.”
As they explain, “the road to tenure does not run through field work in businesses.” Younger scholars are encouraged to avoid too much contact with practitioners and practical issues and “to concentrate their research on narrow, scientific subjects, at least until late in their quest for tenure.”
This devastating critique of business schools comes as corporations have experienced a series of devastating embarrassments, financial losses, and charges of fraud. Furthermore, the deans of these schools are hearing from business leaders who are tired of interviewing business school graduates who seem to have no connection to the actual world of business and little interest in the practical demands of management. Bennis and O’Toole are absolutely right in laying this problem at the feet of the faculty. Driven by envy of other academic disciplines, professional school faculty often feel themselves to be second-class citizens within the context of the university and its academic culture. In order to overcome this, faculty fall prey to the temptation to reconceive their professional responsibility in terms of purely academic discourse and research. The fact that business school faculties include tenured professors “who have never set foot inside a real business, except as customers,” spells eventual disaster. But is this insight limited to business schools?
Not hardly. Theological seminaries can succumb to the same pressures and seminary faculties can be seduced by the same temptations. As in the world of business schools, seminaries are tempted to redefine their mission in strictly academic terms. The lure of academic respectability and the enticements of the academic culture exert a magnetic pull toward those who have given themselves to the teaching profession. Understanding this fact is a first step toward preserving the seminary’s mission.
Theological seminaries should be unembarrassed to hold the stewardship of a primary mission that is irreducibly directed to the practice of ministry. Of course, there is a vital and non-negotiable scholarly dimension to this academic task, and the training of ministers requires nothing less than the highest standards of academic excellence. Nevertheless, the presidents, administrators, and governing boards of theological seminaries must be ever alert to the patterns of this seduction and the ease with which a theological seminary can turn itself into a think tank devoted to purely academic disciplines rather than a seminary dedicated to the training of Christian ministers, missionaries, and church leaders.
The fact that a tenured professor in a business school may never have set foot inside a real business, except in the role of a customer, is a genuine scandal. How can a person with such limited practical experience understand the real challenges of management and business leadership?
This is even more true for the faculty of theological seminaries. It should be unthinkable that the faculty in a theological seminary would include professors of such limited experience in church life. And yet, I have interviewed applicants for faculty positions who, when asked about their church involvement and ministry experience, have virtually nothing to offer. The task of seminary leaders is to make certain that persons of such minimal church experience and commitment are not offered faculty positions in our schools.
The academic world is, by its nature, a profoundly insular and self-referential environment. The academic guilds control much of the academic process, and faculty power is virtually unbridled in some institutions. Theological seminaries must be fully accountable to the local church and must see their task as centered in the training of ministers for the actual tasks and challenges of preaching, teaching, evangelism, and church leadership.
The pastor’s calling requires a level of learning and scholarship that goes far beyond what should be expected in any other professional school. After all, the high calling of preaching and teaching the Word of God is a stewardship that goes beyond any other earthly profession. Churches should expect and demand that their pastors will receive the very highest levels of training in biblical studies, theology, church history, and various fields of classical theological disciplines.
Yet, taken in themselves, this is simply not enough. True Christian scholarship, dedicated to the training of Christian ministers, must be devoted to and measured by what actually happens in the local church. Otherwise, the theological seminary will be more of a curse than a blessing to the local church and its denomination.
Warren Bennis and James O’Toole have issued what they hope will be a wake-up call for business schools. Inadvertently, they have also sent an important message to theological seminaries, lest we lose our way as well.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
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By Chuck Colson
What does Labor Day mean? For most of us, it’s nothing more than a welcome break from what we tend to see as “the daily grind.” Work to so many people is simply a necessary evil. The goal in life is putting in enough time to retire and relax.
But that attitude and that goal is contrary to a Christian worldview perspective on work.
Christians have a special reason to celebrate Labor Day, which honors the fundamental dignity of workers, because we worship a God Who labored to make the world—and Who created human beings in His image to be His workers. When God made Adam and Eve, He gave them work to do: cultivating and caring for the earth.
In the ancient world, the Greeks and Romans looked upon manual work as a curse, something for lower classes and slaves. But Christianity changed all of that. Christians viewed work as a high calling—a calling to be co-workers with God in unfolding the rich potential of His creation.
This high view of work can be traced throughout the history of the Church. In the Middle Ages, the guild movement grew out of the Church. It set standards for good workmanship and encouraged members to take satisfaction in the results of their labor. The guilds became the forerunner of the modern labor movement.
Later, during the Reformation, Martin Luther preached that all work should be done to the glory of God. Whether ministering the Gospel or scrubbing floors, any honest work is pleasing to the Lord. Out of this conviction grew the Protestant work ethic.
Christians were also active on behalf of workers in the early days of the industrial revolution, when factories were “dark satanic mills,” to borrow a phrase from Sir William Blake. In those days, work in factories and coal mines was hard and dangerous. Men, women, and children were practically slaves—sometimes even chained to machines.
Then John Wesley came preaching and teaching the Gospel throughout England. He came not to the upper classes, but to the laboring classes—to men whose faces were black with coal dust, women whose dresses were patched and faded.
John Wesley preached to them—and in the process, he pricked the conscience of the whole nation.
Two of Wesley’s disciples, William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, were inspired to work for legislation that would clean up abuses in the workplace. At their urging, the British parliament passed child-labor laws, safety laws, and minimum-wage laws.
But here in America we’ve lost the Christian connection with the labor movement. In many countries, however, from Canada to Poland, that tradition still remains strong.
Much of our culture has a distinctly Greek view of work: We work out of necessity. But, you see, we are made in the image of God and as such we are made to work—to create, to shape, to bring order out of disorder.
So this Labor Day, remember that all labor derives its true dignity as a reflection of the Creator. And that whatever we do, in word or deed, we should do all to the glory of God.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — For most people, it’s back to work Tuesday after a holiday weekend with family and friends. And for many, a new study shows, it will be under a bad boss. Nearly two of five bosses don’t keep their word and more than a fourth bad mouth those they supervise to co-workers, the Florida State University study shows.
And those all-too-common poor managers create plenty of problems for companies as well, leading to poor morale, less production and higher turnover.
“They say that employees don’t leave their job or company, they leave their boss,” said Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in the College of Business at Florida State University, who joined with two doctoral students at the school to survey more than 700 people working in a variety of jobs about how their bosses treat them.
“No abuse should be taken lightly, especially in situations where it becomes a criminal act,” said Hochwarter.
Employees stuck in an abusive relationship experienced more exhaustion, job tension, nervousness, depressed moods and mistrust, the researchers found. They found that a good working environment is often more important than pay, and that it’s no coincidence that poor morale leads to lower production.
“They (employees) were less likely to take on additional tasks, such as working longer or on weekends, and were generally less satisfied with their job,” the study found. “Also, employees were more likely to leave if involved in an abusive relationship than if dissatisfied with pay.”
The results of the study are scheduled for publication in the Fall 2007 issue of The Leadership Quarterly, a journal read by consultants, managers and executives.
The findings include:
• 39% of workers said their supervisor failed to keep promises.
• 37% said their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
• 31% said their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment” in the past year.
• 27% said their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
• 24% said their supervisor invaded their privacy.
• 23% said their supervisor blamed others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment.
Workers in bad situations should remain optimistic, Hochwarter said.
“It is important to stay positive, even when you get irritated or discouraged, because few subordinate-supervisor relationships last forever,” he said. “You want the next boss to know what you can do for the company.”
And workers should know where to turn if they feel threatened, harassed or discriminated against, whether it is the company’s grievance committee or finding formal representation outside the employer.
“Others know who the bullies are at work,” Hochwarter said. “They likely have a history of mistreating others.”
Hochwarter also recommended some methods to minimize the harm caused by an abusive supervisor.
“The first is to stay visible at work,” he said. “Hiding can be detrimental to your career, especially when it keeps others in the company from noticing your talent and contributions.”
The survey was conducted by mail. Workers surveyed included men and women of various ages and races in the service industry and manufacturing, from companies large and small, Hochwarter said.
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