Reverence for Business Relations

We usually do not associate business relationships with reverence, but if we could develop such an attitude we would greatly enhance these relationships. For business to be ethical, and for business to be efficient and effective, the participants must act with loyalty, not only to their own business or the business that they work for, but also to the whole business community. Relationships include manager to employee, manager to investors and creditors, producers to consumers, vendors to buyers, firms to local communities, firms to competitors, and professionals such as accountants and engineers to their professions. Tom Morris, author of If Aristotle Ran General Motors, offers a powerful definition of the ethical relationship between autonomous individuals performing their duty to build a healthy community: “Ethics is all about: spiritually healthy people in socially harmonious relationships” (Bold in the original). This expression merges perfectly with Josiah Royce’s notion of the good. Spirituality consists of inner depth, which enables persons to perceive fuller meaning in their lives and their work and to make ever larger connections with the people and world around them. Harmonious relationships foster the growth of each person and empower them to achieve their own highest potential while enhancing the common enterprise.

Therefore, in an ethical business environment, each person understands the work, the product, and the relationship of all who contribute to its production. They further see how the product contributes to the overall good of the society in which the business flourishes. This description of an ethical business environment may sound unrealistic and would be unrealistic if it presupposed perfect human beings in idyllic settings. But an analogy to physical health might provide some clarity

A few people are perfectly healthy in a physical sense, others are morbidly ill, and most of us lie somewhere between. But each of us, as well as our doctors and other health care professionals, should know what “healthy” means and how to strive toward it. Rather than thinking of health as all or nothing – we are perfect specimens or we are dying – we think of ourselves as more or less healthy and can adopt habits to become more so, or at least stave off becoming less so. The range of healthiness applies also to mental and spiritual health.

The notion of health and sickness applies to our business life, Those who desire to work ethically must be sure that the business in which they work is not hopelessly unethical because of a harmful product, a dishonorable way of doing business, or toxic relationships within the business. When ethical persons have chosen a business in which they believe they can work, they strive to the best of their ability to work loyally toward more harmonious relationships that contribute positively to all who are affected.