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Just Business: Christian Ethics for the Marketplace
Alexander Hill
Ethics is the study of the “shoulds” and doing the right thing. Adding the Christian element adds
Christian values into the equation.
What is the foundation of Christian ethics? The study of ethics (the study of man’s character)
ought to follow the study of theology (the study of God’s character). This, of course, goes
beyond the normal worldly ethical systems of thought. this clearly requires us to understand
what God is like.
Three foundational characteristics: God is holy; just; loving. A Christian decision making
process must take all three into account when a decision is made. The three counter balance
each other, so a solution that uses all three is much more well rounded, not drifting off into
being harsh or legalistic.
Yet man is sinful – most of us spend our time in the middle of wicked to angelic - so what
prevents us from staying down in the muck all the time?
1. Our spiritual core is still intact.
2. God has established government, law, family to hold us in check
3. Jesus’ followers who are the salt and light.
Holiness:
Single-minded devotion to God and absolute ethical purity.
Four aspects of holiness:
1. Zeal for God – is this single minded passion for God compatible with business success?
Not as long as business is a means of honouring God.
2. Purity – ethical purity reflects God’s perfection. This encompasses communication,
purpose, etc.
3. Accountability – this is built in to the moral universe – all actions have consequences
whether in the short term or the long term.
4. Humility – born in the understanding that we can’t make ourselves holy. Humility is not a
precursor to weakness or failure – but a willingness to accurately self assess.
Things to watch out for:
1. Legalism – being technically right in following he rules but without soul; not having any
relational sensitivity. It breeds “just following the rules” and shuts off real moral thinking
in the corporation.
2. Judgementalism – this breeds from pride, a holier than thou attitude. It shuts off
forgiveness.
3. Withdrawl from society – don’t confuse moral separation with physical separation.
Holiness is the acceptance of responsibility not the flight from it.
Justice:
Provide order to society by setting out reciprocal rights and duties for those who are members of
the community.
Negative injunction are easier to agree upon (not harming others).
Affirmative duties are harder to agree upon (duties towards those we have not harmed).
Too much emphasis on rights tends to breed selfishness. Too much emphasis on duties tends to
hurt the freedom to choose and individual dignity.
Four aspects of justice:
1. Procedural rights focus on decision-making and include the concepts of due process and
equal protection. Elements of due process include impartiality, the use of fair and
adequate evidence, the opportunity to air “your side of the story” if accused of wrong
doing. Equal protection prohibits discrimination by decision makers.
2. Substantive rights are the rights that procedural rights seek to protect. IE – property
ownership, bodily safety etc.
3. Merit – this links cause and effect and justifies an unequal distribution is some instances.
This is allowable as long as the procedural and substantive rights issues are taken care of.
4. Contractual justice – should not cause harm to others; procedural justice must be upheld;
we must fulfill our contractual promises.
If any of these elements of justice are violated, compensation comes into play.
Things to watch out for: justice can be harsh (even when it is accurately carried out). It can get
too cold and dispassionate for comfort. How do we react to employees that have problems?
Holiness and justice condemn us and separate us from God – showing how clearly we need
forgiveness.
Love:
It is interesting that Jesus included both holiness and justice in His definition of love. This is how
relationships get entered into the equation.
Three characteristics:
1. Empathy – working with people requires this, long term relationships with
suppliers/customers also requires this.
2. Mercy – this is how empathy is put into action.
3. Sacrifice to others – the willingness to give away the rights that justice gives to us.
Things to watch out for:
1. A narrow definition of love as only relevant to relationships at the expense of justice and
the rights of other parties.
2. Ambiguity – love does not often determine which act is the most loving.
3. The doormat outcome – using love to lie or act immorally sets the stage to do it again and
again. These all violate holiness and justice principles. All three must be balanced for
things to work out correctly.
PART II – False Exits:
Dual Morality – otherwise known as cultural relativism. Each nation and culture defines what is
right and wrong. Business and personal morality can be kept separate. Many writers contend
that this is true.
The Christian response: dual morality attacks each of the three underlying principles of Christian
ethics.
1. It idolizes the gain of money, promotes ethical impurity, and exempts areas of life from
the Lordship of Christ. (holiness)
2. Common practice is used to justify many actions that override employee rights etc.
(justice)
3. Love is destroyed when you stick it to the other guy before he sticks it to you.
4. The Christian alternative is the concept of vocation. Do away with the split between the
sacred and the secular (work) and you have the possibility of equating your vocation with
your work (Luther). A third approach (preferred by Hill) places your work into the sphere
of your vocation – your work serves as a vehicle through which spiritual values can be
worked out. This notion shows that there is financial risk in living this way. We are not
guaranteed that we will become financially successful, because that is not the measure of
a Christian’s success. Honouring God and serving your neighbour become the chief
measure.
Law:
Looking to the law to determine what is acceptable behaviour. This confuses what is legal with
what is morally right or permissible. Two approaches are common – positivism and
integration.
Positivism – Three aspects:
1. Divorce law from ethics. Don’t worry about what should be legal – only care about what
is legal.
2. Law is whatever the government says it is. There can be no complaints if the law is
changed in a way that helps or hurts us.
3. Law is inductive – to be studied and created based on objective facts, not abstract
philosophies.
Critiques of positivism:
1. Law is the result of an imperfect political process, heavily influenced by lobbyists etc.
2. Positivism justifies immoral behaviour therefore it must be wrong or at least incomplete.
Slavery, apartheid etc were all legal at one time.
3. The placing of human law as the ultimate guide dethrones God from His rightful place as
moral authority.
4. It leads to more and more government intervention into business.
The Integrated Christian Approach:
You can’t separate law and ethics. God’s moral principles supersede man made law. No human
action is exempt from God’s authority. A universal set of values (duties and rights) comes
into being – the duty to tell the truth, keep promises, make restitution, respect legitimate
human authority and the rights of others etc. Rights include free choice, equal protection,
dignity, due process, property ownership, life and to be told the truth.
Critiques/responses of the integrated approach:
1. It is neither scientific nor precise. It provides no easy answers, just a framework.
a. Do positivists claim that love and honesty have no value if they can’t quantify
them? Certainly not.
b. Many other “soft” items such as music, art etc enrich society yet we do not
dismiss them as not valuable.
2. No one has the authority to make up a list of universal values, and doing so ignores
cultural imperatives.
a. Hill uses the term “flexible absolutism” to indicate there must be standards that
are absolute yet require flexible implementation in different cultures.
b. Dignity and truth telling would be examples of primary law, and how those
universal values would be implemented would be secondary law.
3. Society does not want religious standards imposed on society/business. It will slow us
down and make us less competitive.
a. We can’t force religion down an electorates throat, since they elect the leaders.
Often politics reduces society to the lowest common denominator morally.
b. Religion does not want to delegate too much power to government.
c. Law has a limited function – it establishes limits, does not create saints. In free
societies the law provides the moral floor of expected behaviour. God’s standards
focus on internal motivations and the law focuses on outward deeds. People are
expected to behave above that level. When companies or people do not follow the
expectations, then society steps in to legislate a new floor to force them to
comply.
Agency:
The tension that exists when an employee and his/her employer have differing aims. IE – is the
employee expected to set aside personal aims/ethics when at work?
The Christian employee has three constituents to whom responsibility lies– God first, employer
and neighbours. It is similar to employees who a re labour union members, who have
allegiance to the union and to the employer. The issue will focus on requested acts that,
though legal, conflict with the moral boundaries of the employee.
Two models from Scriptures:
1. The submissive model: the “chain of command” approach, where we are instructed to be
submissive to those in authority. Leaders are God’s appointed ones in the marketplace so
they are to be obeyed.
The submissive model is more deficient.
1. It is based on having slaves be subservient to their masters. This is not the case today.
Loyalty is a valid virtue, however it is only one virtue, not to be pursued above all
else. Loyalty to the point of servility becomes a problem. There is not any personal
moral activity at that point.
2. An employment contract requires that the employee will work hard for the attainment
of company goals, but not to specifically abandon their personal moral foundation.
3. It encourages altruistic sinning. Sinning for the good of another.
2. The purist model: their obligation to God and ethical purity is primary. New and Old
Testament instructions to obey God, not men are followed here. Covenant supersedes
contract.
Critique of the purist model:
Two potential approaches to this model:
1. Legalistic approach – they will simply refuse to do anything that contradicts their
position in their opinion. This suggests that there is a simple, specific answer to every
situation. This is in contradiction to the Biblical interest in the spirit of the law as well
as the letter of the law. They tend to become self-righteous, with too little emphasis
on grace, mercy and forgiveness.
2. The accommodating approach – acknowledge their superiors as fellow neighbours to
be loved.
a. Some things can be acceded to as less important just as you would do for a
neighbour. (as long as it is not clearly morally wrong)
b. More willingness to listen in the morally unclear situations. Less interest in
confrontation.
c. We should not be paternalistic – we are not God. He allowed free choice and for
people to make mistakes. Should we not do the same? If a grocery store sells
cigarettes along with the thousands of other items, can we continue to be a clerk
there?
d. They look for positive solutions to the ethical dilemmas rather than simply using
confrontation as a weapon.
Honesty and Deception:
Honesty is crucial for three reasons:
1. It builds trust. Honest communication is the building block for trust.
2. Relational networks are built when people trust each other. This builds community.
3. Honesty respects the dignity of those to whom the communication is addressed.
Lying vs. deception: lying includes intentionality, requires communication (keeping quiet is not
lying), and requires the speaker to know that the other party will accept the communication
as the truth. Deception falls down on all our points (Purity, holiness, love, empathy, mercy,
justice etc.).
Is deception ever justified?
The church has argued over this for centuries, citing various examples where various forms of
partial truths etc. were permissible. Some still feel that no trust can come from a lie. Others
that the speaker’s motives play an important part here. The Old Testament has many stories
where people lied to shelter people from death etc.
Issues when conflicting duties are involved:
1. Was actual lying involved since the statements were made under duress? Life threatening
situation are easy to condone, but few situations are that bad.
2. Should decisions be made based on the lesser of two evils? Lying is less than having
someone lose their life. This might be workable, but you could never go beyond life and
death situations.
Mutual Deceits:
Do onto the other guy before he does it to you. The claim would be that it doesn’t matter if they
lie under these circumstances, because everyone knows that they don’t mean it. These
situations are very rare when this could be argued to actually operating. They are fraught
with moral danger, because humans are rarely content with a well balanced situation where
no one has the advantage. Also, business situations encompass a wide range of participants,
some of whom can discern such a situation better than others (IE - Kids). Pursuing such
practices requires that people be put into situations where their personal reputations etc will
be put on trial later on, even if it could be said that the companies all know the “game”.
What if I am forced or the person has no right to hear the truth?
This is a appealing but dangerous approach.
1. It is still lying even if the other person doesn’t deserve the right answer.
2. It presumes the lie was the last resort, when in many circumstances it is not.
3. Ethical purity suggests we should not stoop to the lower level of those who we would
wish to lie to. Do good to those who do evil to you.
4. Lying routinely gets out of hand, causing other unforeseen outcomes.
Exaggeration:
This erodes trust in communications. People often can misunderstand the impact of comments or
claims made in an exaggerated manner. Usually done for selfish reasons, it can’t lead to a
good outcome. Hyperbole is not exaggeration.
Ambiguity:
IE the product works “up to 12 full hours”. Sometimes it deliberately misleads, rather than being
a creative response to an unusual situation (substituting the mashed potatoes for ice cream in
the hot photo set). How can it be good if it is designed to intentionally take advantage of a
less sophisticated party?
Concealment and Disclosure:
Secrecy is not necessarily wrong. The question is:
When is it loving, just and holy to keep another’s secret?
1. Dignity rights – to expect to share our inner thoughts as we choose and for them to be
kept private.
2. Property rights are often intertwined with secrets.
3. Loyalty rights are involved – we have shared secrets or in some cases the employee has
secret company information.
4. Secrecy is never an absolute right. Loyalty over a secret can not be higher that other
larger moral issues nor can we allow the individuality of employees be swallowed up in
following the “group’s” accepted behaviours.
When should you disclose what is wrong?
Three Biblical principles are in order here:
1. The right to know – IE informed consent for medical procedures. Valid if the other party
has a bonafied right to know.
2. Application of the Golden Rule to the situation. What would you want if you were on the
other end of the equation? This suggests many actions are the right thing to do. It does
not require that we act as the parents of customers/employees as they have a reasonable
responsibility to educate themselves (IE - it may not require “full disclosure” in certain
instances such as the product for sale down the street for a few dollars cheaper) if all
other aspects of the process pass our tests.
3. Prevention of significant harm- if the action can cause significant harm to others
disclosure is required.
What tests are good for “whistle blowers”?
1. What are the agent’s motives? Self promotion and revenge are not acceptable.
2. Is the allegation based on solid evidence – speculation or guessing can ruin reputations.
3. Have we tried all the internal channels first (told our boss etc.) before we go to the top or
outside the company?
4. What is the as appropriate level of disclosure? Some things are to remain private, some
are for company discussion, some relate to significant public interest and outside the
company is OK.
Employer/Employee Relations:
Hill reviews Taylor’s scientific management, Mayo’s experiments leading to Hergberg’s HR
work, and McGregor’s Theory X & Y. Hill seems to critique Theory X as a real theory (as
opposed to a construct as McGregor intended it) and therefore finds the expected holes in it.
Theory X denigrates human beings, polarizes labour and management, limits ethical
questions to the realm of contractual obligations and property rights (matching the focus on
piece rates etc) – the other dimensions of ethics are ignored because they do fit into a system
focusing narrowly on efficient piece rate production. It does provide a strong ethically
desirable focus on accountability.
Theory Y has drawbacks as well. Sin’s impact on human nature makes some employees take
advantage of an employer.
Hill talks of a concept called covenantal management as a Christian approach. This involves four
aspects:
1. Dignity is a fundamental right, as each person is a unique bearer of God’s image.
2. Reciprocity acknowledges mutual respect, shared obligations, and joint accountability.
The employer agrees to give due process, behave with integrity, and respect workers
value in exchange for the worker giving diligence, honesty and cooperation.
3. Servant leadership - authority is a platform for serving others.
4. Gift recognition involves affirming and utilizing others talents.
Employee Rights in Termination and Privacy:
Two kinds of employees: term and at will.
Term employees – the end date is established up front. This requires just cause and due process
to fire the person. This is a tougher standard.
At will employees do not have this protection. The abuse of this has caused the courts to step in
and provide some safeguards.
Traditional defence for the at will doctrine –
1. Property rights give that right to employers.
2. The “contract” is open ended with no promise of due process.
3. It is highly efficient.
Criticisms of the at will doctrine:
1. The call to property rights ends up treating workers like property, with no dignity and
respect. The day of the small family business being the norm is out of date with today’s
large modern corporations.
2. The narrow reliance on only contractual justice. This ignores the other aspects of
covenantal management as outlines above.
3. It is not as efficient as claimed, as lousy managers can cover their mistakes by firing
people. Efficiency must mean more than numerical output or being able to get rid of an
employee instantly if desired.
Covenantal management seeks balance between the rights of the company and the dignity and
due process needs of employees. The suggestion was that managers only be allowed to
suspend employees, with other professionals required to step in to make sure a proper
process occurred before anyone was fired.
Privacy/drug testing: what guidance do justice, holiness and love provide?
1. Make it the least intrusive as possible when it has to be done. Some plants have
legitimate safety concerns that drug users would cause significant safety issues for others.
2. Focus testing only on workers I the high-risk positions where damage can be done.
3. Test results are only used to identify drug use – no other outcomes are looked for or
reported.
4. The company must pay for high quality lab work and strictly followed processes. This is
not a job to give to the “low ball bidder”.
Discrimination and Affirmative Action:
Strong (required %’s) affirmative action has critics and admirers. The most common complaint is
the two wrongs do not make a right. Supporters claim that distributory justice will not happen
on its own, it is necessary to blunt the social class distinctions from setting in, compensatory
justice requires compensation for the past wrongs.
The usual approach is for proportional representation (distributory justice) . Biblical standards
would not support equal distribution per se – they would argue against the extreme
differences in class structure but would only require equal opportunity, not equal results. Too
many other factors come into play when trying to determine if discrimination exists – mere
under representation is not enough.
Compensatory justice is the most similar to ideas found in the Scriptures. Although employment
is not mentioned specifically in this light in the Bible, it follows that discrimination that
causes economic harm is supportable from Scriptures. The issues are:
1. The Scriptures usually deal with discrimination on an individual basis, not in groups.
Restitution comes when a specific victim, specific harm, and specific wrongdoer are
identified. Most discrimination is identified in group form.
2. As a result, it rewards non-victims and forces non-wrongdoers to pay, which creates
moral complications.
The Environment:
Is Christianity really anthropocentric? Does nature only serve to make man happy? Is the only
real focus of Christians on God, and therefore it does not matter how we treat nature?
1. The arrogance towards God and His creation (nature included) does not track with
Scripture.
2. Egotism is the result – arrogance towards nature often ends up being nature used to harm
or take advantage of other men for our gain or pleasure.
3. This approach depletes resources.
4. It tends to place faith in technology to solve the earth’s problems rather than in God.
Another type of approach is Biocentric ethics:
This is a broader approach, not just focusing on man or nature, but on all the living species on
earth. It places equal value on any life form, saying that all must be weighed in a decision.
This often crosses over into the spiritual realm, with Hinduism and the New Agers chief
among those practicing this. Humans are clearly devalued in this scheme.
Theocentric ethics:
Christianity is god centered, not man centered. We should note that man is the “jewel” of God’s
creation. We are more important than the birds. We have the authority to manage the
creation, but also the accountability as we will present an account of our actions.
Property:
A topic greatly talked about in the Bible. It was in two of the commandments.
Four positive aspects of property:
1. Property is God’s gift, if acquired and used properly.
2. It is sacramental in character: sacraments are avenues through which divine grace is
conferred and human worship is elicited. It is good to use property for the furtherance of
His kingdom.
3. Property can also be a reward. There is a cause and effect where the fruits of our labour
can be enjoyed.
4. Property can be a means to aid others.
Four negative aspects of property:
1. It can become an idol.
2. It can become false security.
3. It can become temptation – for theft, for greed etc.
4. It can become a threat to human relationships. It can cause greed arguments over control
or power, it causes class divisions.
Comments:
1. We must respect property rights. (8th commandment)
2. We must use our property generously - for the good of others. (8th commandment)
3. Five elements of a more balanced approach:
a. Accept the responsibility of being a steward.
b. Be zealous for God in the marketplace.
c. Resist the property related temptations shown above.
d. Value people over property.
e. Be slow to criticize others’ use of property.
There is a short checklist on pages 217-219 that outlines the theocentric approach to business
ethics.