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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.