in Social Ethics for Business
Faith and Values at Work: A Seminar in Spiritual and Ethical
Integration for Managers and Executives A significant number of religiously committed managers in business and
government feel a "gap" or "split" between their faith
and the work they do. They sense that their faith ought to make a difference
in every part of their lives, but just what kind of difference it ought
to make at work is not always clear. The world of work often seems like
a separate sphere, cut off from the rest of people's lives and operating
according to its own peculiar values, goals, and rules. The religious
convictions that may motivate people's actions usually remain unspoken
there -- a fact that becomes all the more significant when, in response
to the pressures of the workplace, people find that they are about to
compromise, or have already compromised, their deeply held religious or
ethical values. How can a person deal with this two-way pull, this sense
of disjointedness? To help address the issue, the Arrupe Program in Social Ethics for Business
has designed an eight-week program entitled "Faith and Values at
Work: A Seminar in Spiritual and Ethical Integration for Executives and
Managers." Its aim is to help executives and managers develop a faith-centered
framework for thinking about themselves, the purpose of business, and
organizational leadership. A pilot version of the seminar was offered to a group of twelve parishioners
at Holy Trinity Catholic Church
in Washington, DC, during the fall of 1996. The members of the group brought
with them a wealth of managerial expertise in areas that included the
investment, insurance, and health care industries, the news media, law,
government agencies, and government-sponsored institutions. Led by Woodstock Fellows Mike Stebbins and Jim Nolan with the assistance
of Woodstock Director Jim Connor, S.J., the seminar used the actual experiences
of the participants as its primary "textbook." Each session
opened with a prayer, quiet reflection on a passage from scripture, and
the sharing of insights about the passage. Part of each evening was devoted
to the presentation of new material by one of the Woodstock fellows, and
another part to a discussion of the "homework" assignments that
the participants had worked on during the week. The homework was a crucial
element in the process. Each week the participants were asked to do some
reading and to answer questions requiring them to reflect on their own
experience of work in the light of ideas presented in the seminar. This
reflection and the ensuing discussions served as crucibles where the melding
of theory and practice could take place. Each meeting ended with an opportunity
for the participants to evaluate what had been accomplished that evening,
followed by a closing prayer. The seminar covered a range of interrelated topics. Since its purpose
was to help people acquire an integrating framework, the participants
began with a question not about business or management but about us as
human beings: What are we for? What is the ultimate purpose of
human living? As Christians we believe that God, in an outpouring of boundless
wisdom and love, has brought all of creation into being and guides its
continual unfolding. In a way that we can hardly begin to understand,
Christ is redeeming the entire created universe, drawing it towards a
consummation in which all things will find their fulfillment. We believe
that the destiny to which all human beings are called - a destiny which
lies beyond the limits of this life - is to be united with one another
forever as a family sharing in the life of Father, Son, and Spirit. If
our ideas about business don't somehow take these fundamental facts into
account, then they are ideas about a world other than the one that actually
exists. The seminar participants next were asked to consider the kind of persons
we have to be in order to cooperate consistently with what God is doing
in the world. We are endowed by God with an inner dynamism, a desire to
discover the truth about things and to choose and do what is truly valuable.
The dynamism manifests itself in four activities: paying attention (experiencing),
finding connections (understanding), verifying explanations (judging),
and choosing responsibly (deciding). The activities are interrelated:
we pay attention in order to find connections, we find connections in
order to make correct judgments about reality, and we make correct judgments
in order to act responsibly. When we perform these activities well and
consistently, we are living "authentically." Cooperating with
God means, among other things, cooperating with this central, God-given
aspect of ourselves. When we ignore, resist, or stifle the dynamism in
us, we fall away from our true selves and become less capable of knowing
and choosing the good that God would have us do. The participants' stories about life at work bore testimony to the need
for authentic human living in organizational life. Like an individual,
a community tends to make progress to the extent that its members act
authentically. Conversely, a community tends to slide into decline if
its way of operating becomes increasingly marked by inattentiveness, unintelligent
thinking, unreasonable judging, and irresponsible decision-making. Businesses
and other institutions are not exempt from this rule. The seminar participants
affirmed that managers and executives must do what they can to create
a climate in which people throughout the organization are encouraged to
display intelligent and ethical behavior and are rewarded when they do
so. Similarly, there have to be disincentives built into the culture which
discourage inauthentic or unethical behavior and penalize those who engage
in it. The point is not to reach some imagined state of organizational
perfection. That is impossible. The real goal is to build an organization
that is continually striving to find ways to make itself more authentic,
that achieves the increments of progress that are realistically attainable,
and that is willing to recognize and correct its mistakes and oversights.
A considerable portion of the seminar was devoted to discussing the role
of business in serving the common good, the conflicts that arise when
people within an organization disagree about values, and the difficulty
of trying to act with intelligence and integrity in the face of real pressure
-- not only from outside, but also from within ourselves -- to adopt a
lower, more expedient standard of behavior. As time went on, it became
increasingly clear that integrating faith, ethical values, and the requirements
of organizational life cannot possibly be accomplished within the scope
of an eight-week program. It is the task of an entire lifetime. It also
became clear that only the experience of God's love can give us the assurance,
the courage, the peace, and the single-hearted commitment that we need
to keep at the task. Fostering our awareness of this love at work in us
and others requires a life of prayer and regular participation in the
worship of the believing community. As the seminar came to a close the participants reported feeling that,
though they had barely begun to grapple with the issue of integrating
faith, values, and the requirements of the workplace, they could now approach
it from a new and broader perspective. They also spoke of the sense of
community that had grown over the course of the eight weeks as they shared
their questions, frustrations, insights, hopes, fears, successes, and
failures with one another. A number of people expressed the need for continuing
what the seminar had begun. Jim Nolan and Mike Stebbins will explore alternatives
with the members of the group, including the possibility of starting a
chapter of the Woodstock Business
Conference at Holy Trinity. Michael Stebbins is currently working on a revised version of the seminar,
which will be used this year by the Diocese of Paterson (New Jersey) as
a key element of its effort to launch a work life ministry. Session 1: Introduction: The Perspective of Christian Faith Session 2: Personal Authenticity Session 3: Fostering Authenticity in Yourself Session 4: Fostering Authenticity in Your Organization Session 5: The Common Good: What Is It? Session 6: What Is the Purpose of Your Organization? Session 7: Values in a World of Diversity Session 8: The Vocation of Business Leadership [I]t crystallized a "conversation" I've been having since I
began my work as a manager . . . I'd recommend it to my colleagues at
NPR (Catholics, other Christians maybe even to non-Christians). I'd recommend
it because it talks about issues that need to be talked about. It gets
at things others touch on, but don't nail down. I've been describing it
to my colleagues at NPR as "Stephen Covey meets Bernard Lonergan."
[I]t's made a real impact on the way I think about my work as a manager.Producer,
National Public Radio One of the most important things I realized through this course was how
much I value and crave faith-work integration. This may sound simplistic
and obvious, but I think that actually signing up for and taking the course
helped me to articulate that this is a priority in my life. Having gone
through the course itself I am more convinced than ever that the work
I pursue must serve a greater good and that how the work gets done is
as important to me as what gets done. In my work at Peace Corps, I tried
to manage with an eye to both process and product. Although I believed
in working this way and definitely saw how it benefited the staff, the
program, and the agency, I lacked a theoretical framework or justification
for it. The course readings and discussions reinforced what was a "gut
behavior" and now I feel better armed to continue in this mode.
Former Peace Corps manager In a very concrete sense my participation was an integrating experience.
It gave me a rare opportunity to think about and discuss work related
concepts in a faith community environment. I also talked to individuals
at work about the ideas and concepts brought out during the seminar, the
seminar itself, and Woodstock. I would recommend [it to] just about anyone.
Auditor, U.S. Government Accounting Office The seminar was helpful in exploring ways to integrate faith and work
. . . The applications to the business world are apparent, and as government
is driven to implement more business philosophies and practices (i.e.,
total quality management, partnerships, customer service, and contracting
out), government managers need to be exposed to and discuss integration
of faith and values. Labor Relations Specialist, Smithsonian Institution The workshop came at the right time for me . . . For the past two years
I have been the director of a department in a local government which is
embarked on a major culture change - a move to authenticity or as they
say "empowerment" and "leadership" at all levels.
Out of this work three major questions plagued me: How do you "sell"
empowerment/authenticity as a contributing and building force to individuals
at all levels of the organization? How do you describe leadership in a
way that is not hierarchical? How do you reconcile the business decisions
necessary to achieve this new organization with the need to move "good
Christian" people who can't or won't do the job out of the way? The
seminar clarified my own thinking by placing the empowerment concept in
a new context (authenticity), out of which it made much more sense to
me on a personal and spiritual level which was the level I was missing.
Out of this new understanding I have been able to talk about ("sell")
questions one and two. Question three still causes me grief. Director,
county library system This seminar was like a mini-retreat for me. I've had many facets to
my life; the pieces were always there at various times, but your seminar
was very important - it began to pull it all together for me. It improved
me as a person, by making me think about things I normally did not think
about. The assignments were difficult in a good sense, they made you think.
I had to approach the assignments with prayer and thoughtfulness . . .
This seminar has a great deal of substance compared to the many self-improvement,
team building, feel-good programs that are on the street today. This is
a seminar that you can "put in the bank." This is something
that becomes a way of life. Former CEO, insurance trade association
Outline of the Faith and Values at Work Seminar
Comments of participants in the Faith and Values at Work Seminar:
See also: