Developing Leader Virtues: Suggestion #1

ACCEPT CHALLENGING ASSIGNMENTS

You can build muscles through habitual rigorous exercise.  Aristotle teaches that you can also develop moral character—by habitually striving to think and act virtuously—in the right way, at the right time, in the right place, to a right or good end.  Through deliberate, habitual practice, you can develop your disposition to act according to a virtuous standard—toward excellence.  On the other hand, just as the slothful couch potato can see his muscles atrophy, even a moral person can grow less virtuous or even vicious by giving in to temptations to act selfishly or according to other vicious behaviors.

One exercise for developing virtue is that of accepting challenging assignments.      

>>How can young people develop?

The answer is illustrated by following story about the musician Ignace Jan Paderewski. One evening a mother brought her fidgety, squirming nine-year-old to one of Paderewski’s concerts in the hope that her son would be encouraged to practice the piano, if he could just hear the great musician at the keyboard.

Prior to Paderewski’s entrance, the audience buzzed with anticipation.  But the young fidgety boy could stay seated no longer. He slipped from his seat and climbed onto the huge stage to investigate the ebony concert grand Steinway and its leather stool. The sophisticated audience didn’t much notice when the boy sat down at the piano stool. But when he began to play “Chopsticks,” the crowd was startled.  Hundreds of frowning faces pointed in his direction. Irritated and embarrassed, they began to shout:

“Get that boy away from there!”

“Who’d bring a kid that young in here?”

“Somebody stop him!”

Backstage, the master overheard the sounds out front and quickly realized what was happening. Hurriedly, he grabbed his coat and rushed toward the stage. Without one word of announcement he stooped over behind the boy, reached around both sides, and began to improvise a countermelody to harmonize with and enhance “Chopsticks.” As the two of them played together, Paderewski kept whispering words of encouragement in the boy’s ear, challenging him to play it well (related by Charles Swindoll, as reported in Miazza, 2011).

This story is an example of what Kouzes and Posner (2004) teach. Teachers, work supervisors, or parents can likewise challenge their charges or subordinates to succeed, directing them toward small wins and encouraging them to learn from their mistakes.

>>But what about adults?

Character can be developed by adults, as well as by young children.  Psychological research by James Rest et al. (1986) finds that moral development continues throughout formal education–particularly among young adults when they are challenged to leave their comfort zones.  Not only can socialization neutralize and repress a person’s moral character (Bellah et al., 1985), it can have positive influence, as well.  And the formation, refinement, and modification of a person’s operational value system—the attitudes and beliefs that motivate conduct—are ongoing processes throughout one’s life (Josephson, 1988, p. 28).

As an adult, you should cultivate the ground for your own development by welcoming and even seeking out new and testing workplace assignments.  This is not to say you should go to the extreme.  It is important to learn to say no as well as to say yes to requests, resisting the temptation to try anything and everything to the point of exhaustion and frustration.  Moreover, you should avoid assignments that go against your ethical compass.  And if you are already engaged in a task that stretches you mentally, physically, ethically, and spiritually, you might have to decline or postpone additional new challenges until you overcome the first one.

Nevertheless, you need to accept some challenges–even risky and thus frightening ones. Your overall character will be enhanced as you labor outside your comfort zone. You will become more of a person having the moral character fit to lead.   

Note: Future blogs will briefly discuss additional habitual practices that can help you promote your character development.

References:

Bellah, R. et al. (1985). Habits of the Heart. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Josephson, M. (1988). “Teaching Ethical Decision Making and Principled Reasoning.” Ethics: Easier Said Than Done.” 1, 27-33.

Kouzes, J. and B. Posner, eds. (2004). Christian Reflections on the Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Miazza, H. (2011). The Reveille. Jackson, MS.

Rest, J. et al. (1986). Moral Development: Advances in Research and Theory. NY: Praeger.

This blog post is based on a discussion in Whetstone, J. (2013). Leadership Ethics & Spirituality. Bloomington, IN: WestBow.

Purchase:http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000641049/Leadership-Ethics–Spirituality.aspx     

 

 

Developing Character for Leadership

If good leadership depends on the character of the leaders, an aspiring leader needs to ask:

 “How can I develop the moral strength of character I need to be an effective, ethical, and spiritual leader?”

Each person must decide for herself. There is no straightforward checklist of deeds to perform or degrees to earn.  Nor is the key to success found by focusing legalistically on rules.  Developing as a good leader is most of all a spiritual endeavor that develops personal character in terms of the qualities a person needs to fulfill her calling at work, in the home, and as a citizen.  To do this, a leader must understand the importance of moral character and to identify those qualities she needs to cultivate.

What character qualities does a leader need to develop?         

Virtues are character qualities that dispose a person to act in the appropriate manner toward a good end.  The four basic classical virtues of the ancient Greeks are practical wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Collins (2001) identifies humility and professional will to succeed as characteristics of the best leaders. Research among American food store managers and executives finds that personal honesty ranks above all other traits in the workplace (Whetstone, 2001, 2006).  And there are others—successful investor John Templeton once identified over 200.

Beabout (2012) suggests that all these empirically identified traits are connected to the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom (Aristotle’s phronesis or Aquinas’s prudentia)–the central trait needed to pursue the excellences that are internal to management as a domain-relative practice.  A person of practical wisdom has developed excellent habits of deliberation, judgment, and execution (Beabout, 2012, p. 419) for making and acting upon decisions.

Each leader should choose where he focuses his personal character development, on what character qualities she needs to perform to fulfill her role with excellence. 

• What are her personal strengths and weaknesses?
• Which character qualities does she most need to emphasize in her particular context?
• What is the ultimate purpose toward which she is committed, the purpose toward which she wishes to achieve as a leader and as a person?

Addressing these questions sets the stage for preparing a personal character enhancement plan.

You can develop your moral character—no one is too old. 

Character and specific character qualities can be taught and developed, not just at a young age but by young adults–and even throughout one’s lifetime (see Rest et al., 1986).  Whereas traditional instruction through lecturing is generally ineffective for molding character, there are more effective methods.  Schools and business organizations can foster character development by establishing and maintaining a supportive structure and culture, identifying role models, praising the exercise of good character, promoting mentoring, and stressing challenging assignments.

Admittedly, scholars can disagree as to the most effective methods for developing virtue. The process of character development is complex and can be controversial.  But this blogger has found, through his research and experience, that there are effective practices that a leader can adopt for her own character development.  They are practical and can lead to moral character development.

These character development practices include: 

• Accepting challenging assignments
• Engaging a personal character mentor
• Observing other leaders in action
• Reading thought-provoking literature, especially leader biographies  
• Keeping a journal to record and assess leadership observations and experiences.

But because each aspiring leader is created as a unique individual, ultimately she must decide how best to customize her personal development program.  She might find benefit from trying all of them, or by adopting some combination of these habitual practices. The key is then your commitment to follow it in daily practice.

Future posts in this blog site will discuss each of these practices.

They are further discussed in the book Leadership Ethics & Spirituality.

Your comments and questions will be welcomed! 

 

References

Beabout, J. (2012). Management as a domain-relative practice that requires and develops practical wisdom. Business Ethics Quarterly. 22:2, 405-432.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. NY: HarperCollins.

Rest, J., R. Barnett, M. Bebeau, D. Deemer, I. Getz, Y. Moon, J. Spickelmier, S. Thomas, & J. Volker. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory. NY: Praeger.

Whetstone, J. T. (2001). How virtue fits within business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 3:2, 101-114.

Whetstone, J. T. (2006). The manager as a moral person: Exploring paths to excellence. Charlotte, NC: Catawba.

This blog post is based on a discussion in Whetstone, J. (2013). Leadership Ethics & Spirituality. Bloomington, IN: WestBow.

Purchase:http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000641049/Leadership-Ethics–Spirituality.aspx   

  

    

Optimism

It pays to be optimistic.

As a new tweeter, I quickly found that optimistic posts are more likely to attract new followers than are analytical ones.  Critical posts can be turn-offs, especially for those who don’t yet know you personally.  More generally, optimistic leaders tend to attract and influence followers.  Darker souls tend to be suspected and avoided.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Good leaders need to manifest an optimism that convinces others that they really believe in their vision and approaches.

At first blush, this all seems evident, merely common sense. 

However, how can a person be optimistic in today’s troubled world?

British writer Paul Johnson (2003) has observed that today’s discontented intellectuals, the media, and those who seek a materialistic utopia on earth have cynically embraced an ideology of pessimism.  Establishment spokespeople seem to say people can do nothing in the face of economic stagnation and decay, global warming, and international terrorism.

Moreover, moral and religious supports are fading.

Religious and social observers correctly lament that American morals have been declining over recent decades.  The Playboy philosophy of the 1950s seemed to give men permission to avoid the bonds of marriage in sexual practice.  The birth control pill promoted sex without biological consequences.  No-fault divorce nullified “until death us do part” from marriage commitments.  Seemingly ubiquitous are cohabitation, easily accessible pornography, and the view that tolerance is the highest-priority value in our new age.  And daily news reports suggest that things are growing worse.

But this is just why leaders need to be courageous, with optimism.

This requires a spiritually-aware approach to leadership.

From a Christian perspective, the increasing moral darkness of our world should not diminish hope for the future.  Instead, it challenges the faithful to gird their loins, to demonstrate effective, ethical, and spiritual leadership.  God remains in control—and the faithful trust in His good character.  Christ will return. Those who believe this should be optimists and lead with assurance until then.

Humans remain God’s earthly stewards, and believers are created in Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph 2:10).  He wants His followers to be alert and ready and doing the earthly duties for which they are called.  A positive example comes from another difficult time in America’s history. Os Guinness tells of a 1780 session of the Connecticut House of Representatives that was interrupted when an unexpected eclipse of the sun occurred.  Fear and clamor arose amidst the sudden darkness.  Some members wanted to adjourn, some to pray, and some to prepare for the coming of the Lord.  But the Speaker of the House rose to the occasion with sound logic and good faith, proclaiming: “The Day of the Lord is either approaching or it is not.  If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment.  And if the Lord is returning, I, for one, choose to be found doing my duty.  I therefore ask that candles be brought” (Plantinga, 2002, p. 144).

The book Leadership Ethics & Spirituality explores how a person can become such a leader.

It will succeed to the extent that it influences leaders to lead wisely.

References:

Johnson, P. (2003). An “Ism” for All Seasons. National Review (October 13).

Plantinga, C. (2002). Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Purchase:http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000641049/Leadership-Ethics–Spirituality.aspx     

Loyalty

Loyalty is one of those old-fashioned virtues that no longer make much sense to many of today’s practical leaders. Doers and shakers seem to believe that companies can no longer be truly loyal, and neither can employees. But is this as it should be?

Humans are still prone to be loyal—but to whom or what? If a person is loyal to his boss, this might undermine his loyalty to his ethic, to his fellow employees, to his family, to his God, or to the company mission as he understands it.

Loyalty among humans has limits because of the competing objects of one’s loyalty.  Being totally loyal to one person can lead to lack of loyalty toward others. A husband vows to be ever loyal to his wife and vice-versa; adulterous behavior by either party breaks the vow and damages the relationship. A loyal employee may be faced with choosing to blow the whistle against his employer when the latter leads the organization unethically, such as harming the environment, customers, employees, owners or other stakeholders unlawfully or contrary to the organization’s mission. The whistleblower can be deemed disloyal and thus be persecuted by his superiors and coworkers. But the whistleblower may be acting out of a sense of loyalty that contradicts his loyalty to his superiors. Loyalty is a complex virtue. A commitment to personal moral character can mean that a person at work will have to decide if his ethic can be, “Whatever my boss says, is right, and I will do it.”   Or shouldn’t total obedience depend on what the “it” is?

C. S. Lewis seems to mock unthinking loyalty when he portrays the dufflepuds in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. These creatures, in their silliness, are extremely loyal to their incompetent leader, affirming all he says:

“Well done, Chief. You never said a truer word. You never made a better plan,

Chief. You couldn’t have a better plan than that….Couldn’t have a better order.

Just what we were going to say ourselves. Off we go!” (1970, pp. 112, 113)

This attitude is rather silly, though perhaps not far from that of the faculties and staffs that Lewis may have been mocking. A person with character must be practical rather than blindly loyal. At the same time, she is wise to keep her resume current and stay flexible enough to move to another job if her loyalty is misunderstood.

Loyalty as a virtue involves much more than being a blindly loyal “yes man.”  Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive (1967, p. 148) said that Alfred P. Sloan, the man who led General Motors into becoming the world’s largest manufacturing enterprise, once addressed this phenomenon at a committee meeting. He proclaimed, “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.” Everyone around the table nodded assent. “Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.” Sloan did not want “yes men.” Dufflepuds did not contribute to the building of General Motors.

Early management researcher Mary Parker Follett stressed that followers are vital for helping the leader understand the situation and control it. The leader needs a genuine open-door policy to provide the leader the information and criticism that she must have. This requires continual effort to maintain a relationship of trust and respect. However, one must be careful not to go too far, earning the label of “confrontational junkie” by appearing to enjoy the battle even more than winning it. By working to create and fuel conflict rather than to resolve it constructively, confrontational junkies are not truly loyal to their superiors any more than are the silly dufflepuds. The leader and followers need to seek a virtuous middle ground (or Aristotelian Golden Mean) by working to build an ethical and effective team consensus.

To avoid the detriments of groupthink, the leader must guard against any natural tendency of being overly defensive. He should encourage rather than punish those who are willing to share legitimate concerns. Whereas the ideas of the team player and the power of positive thinking (Blanchard & Peale, 1988) sometimes are perceived to mean that a positive, reliably loyal employee never objects, a truly loyal follower may at times have to exercise the courage to stand up for what he understands is right. Is this disloyal or does it represent a higher loyalty? It does require tolerating some dissent, even if uncomfortable. Good ideas need to be challenged, bad ideas even more so. If the group makes a decision with which the follower still cannot agree, one should seek to learn from it and move ahead to the next decision.

Leadership requires one to prioritize or balance loyalties. Should one stay late at work to help a co-worker complete a key organizational task, risking the wrath of his spouse? Should his boss encourage or even allow this? The best answer is not always evident, requiring the employee and the leader to examine their worldview-directed moral compasses, appealing with moral imagination to their full set of virtues, responsibilities, and the greater good.

This blog post is based on a discussion in Whetstone, J. (2013). Leadership Ethics & Spirituality. Bloomington, IN: WestBow.

Purchase:http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000641049/Leadership-Ethics–Spirituality.aspx   

Checks and Balances

So long as human beings run organizations, whether profit, non-profit or government organizations, and those organizations have goals and tasks, there will be pressures and those pressures produce ethical lapses whether the accounting focuses on ROE or sources and uses. (Marianne Jennings, 2012, p. 525)

Possession of power is a great temptation for abusing it. This is a universal phenomenon among even the most well-intentioned humans and organizations.  Indeed, the problem is an ancient one; Plato depicts it in the account of Gyges’ ring in The Republic. The American Founding Fathers were well aware of the danger posed by lack of constraints on the powerful.

One contemporary example is the exorbitant and increasing level of top executive compensation.  This imbalance is especially noticeable in a time of economic recession and high unemployment.  In corporations, it is the CEO and the Board of Directors (who either work for the CEO or are his buddies, often together on multiple boards) who set executive pay.  Some boards hire executive compensation firms for guidance.  Being well aware, however, that they need to furnish recommendations that will please their clients, these paid consultants may actually contribute to executive pay inflation. In effect, the CEO has undue influence over his or her own pay and compensation—truly objective checks and balances are too often missing.

Worker unions were established to offset the power of owners and managements and their control over the distribution of the fruits of their labor.  One result is that “unions have been respected in America forever, and public-employee unions have reaped that respect” (Noonan, 2011).  The two reasons are that unions always stood for the little guy and that Americans like balance, such as management being balanced by a union.  However, journalist Peggy Noonan now laments:

“But with public-employee unions, the balance has been off for decades.  When union leaders negotiate with a politician, they’re negotiating with someone they can hire and fire.  Public unions have numbers and money, and politicians need both.  And politicians fear strikes because the public hates them.  When governors negotiate with unions, it’s not collective bargaining, it’s more like collusion.  Someone said last week that taxpayers aren’t at the table.  The taxpayers aren’t even in the room.” (Noonan, 2011)

“Currently, the unions are not perceived to be looking out for the little guy—the public school pupil, the beleaguered administrator, or the private-sector worker who doesn’t have a good health-care plan, who barely has a pension, who lacks job security, and who is paying everyone else’s bills.” (Ibid.)

The solution of America’s Founders to such issues was a structural one.  They believed that men are imperfect and that their power and the temptation to use it for self-interest need to be checked and balanced, for the public welfare.  They thus built checks and balances into the Constitution, hoping to establish the ethical principle of balanced structures into American government and the national ethos.   But in the postmodern world, this principle seems to have faded from public attention and organizational practice.  Morals have declined while the importance of power and autonomous will have gained stature.

An egregious example is the Federal Government’s new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform (The Wall Street Journal, 2011).  According to The Wall Street Journal’s March 16, 2011 editorial, “President Warren’s Empire,” CFPB is an “independent bureau” that is not subject to annual Congressional appropriations.  Headed by a White House appointed czar, not needing Senate confirmation, it was to have jurisdiction and independent rule-making authority over most of the country’s financial institutions, without being required to incorporate the views of other banking regulators.  Constitutional checks and balances appear to be missing.  Is financial tyranny the logical outcome?

Business ethics has emerged and started to mature as an academic discipline and a publicized business concern.  But to date it has produced relatively little documented success (Stark, 1993), amid a torrent of ethical scandals throughout organizations and industries as well as in government.  Corporate CEOs and other organizational leaders tout their ethics codes, but they have not overcome human nature and competitive pressures; studies have not found measureable benefit from such codes.  Ethics officers and observers now do not generally have the respect of CEOs or the higher levels of unions, since they are either co-opted in the corporate organization or considered peripheral to actual business practice.   Clearly communicating and implementing deeper, more serious structural precautions might prove more effective.

Marianne Jennings (2004, 2012) suggests ten fixes that are required to create a culture of virtue in a government (really, in any) organization.  These include starting with making sure that those in the organization understand that its goals and other measured results must be achieved within the parameters of pre-established and absolute values–such as honesty, not giving false impressions, avoiding conflicts of interest, and fairness in application of rules and in following procedures.  Decisions at every level must be tested by absolute ethical standards, not by circumstances and not due to social pressure.  Legal compliance is the minimum, not the maximum standard of behavior. Every employee, starting with the CEO, should be expected to challenge his own decisions. He or she is to ask, “Should I do this?”—not merely “Could I do this?”  

An ethical culture must be maintained through structural means, such as hotlines, allowing, even encouraging, organizational members to express their ethical concerns.  Investigation needs to be objective, thorough, and uniformly applied at every level of the organization, from the very top to all agents, activities, and locations.  Discipline needs to be consistent, sure, and just.  If not, even the well-intentioned code and ethics program will at best be window dressing.

But the cultural environment and future outlook, while depressing, need not be hopeless for those committed to ethics.  Members of the ethics profession, including both academics and ethics officers, can focus more on moral character development and the promotion of ethical cultures.  It is not enough to engage in philosophical debate (often abstractly focused on the most difficult and rare dilemmas) or to relegate ethics education to the realm of employee compliance training.  Instead, ethicists need to become committed leaders with greater impact on actual management and government practice.  Perhaps the ethics professionals and associations should promote the acceptance or even the legislation of greater balance in the structure of organizations, ones that are redesigned to seek virtuous purposes ethically.   The solution is not to give more power to the bosses nor is it to transfer power to the people. Instead, concentrate on constraining power imbalances–and possible tyranny–by promoting the influence and recognizing the contributions, worth, and dignity of every player and every role.  And recognizing the reality of human nature, the structural principle of checks and balances needs to be woven into the fabric of the organization so that ethics becomes its heart.

Dr. J. Thomas Whetstone

Purchase:http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000641049/Leadership-Ethics–Spirituality.aspx     

References

Jennings, Marianne M. (2004). Preventing organizational ethical collapse. Journal of     Government Financial Management. 53:1, 12-21.

Jennings, Marianne M. (2012). The fish bowl existence of government. Business Ethics: Case studies and selected readings, 7^th ed. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning,         525-527.

Noonan, P. (2011). Public unions get too “friendly.” The Wall Street Journal. (March 5-6), p.             A15.

President Warren’s empire. (2011). The Wall Street Journal. (March 16), A18.

Stark, A. (1993). What’s the matter with business ethics? Harvard Business Review. 71:3, 38-48.

Practical Wisdom from Proverbs

Practical Wisdom for Living and Working

Excerpts from Whetstone, J. T. “Practical Wisdom for Living and Working.”’ February 2008. Succeed to Lead. 2:4. www.succeedtolead.com.

How can Christians apply their Christian worldview in the “real world?” One way is to learn how to adopt a personal policy of reading, periodically, through the timeless wisdom revealed in the Book of Proverbs.

Biblical wisdom literature (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and the Epistle of James) speaks of the human condition in its enduring aspects, relying on the authors’ observations of human behavior. They are closer to modern sociological approaches than much of the rest of scripture and thus lend themselves to more facile application to business applications. (The Parables of Jesus, often referring to wisdom themes, have great application to business as well, as do other parts of the canon, such as Amos.) The emotions and other forces that drive human relationships are often at the center of wisdom thinking.

The epistemological method of wisdom is the repetition and recording of traditions to be handed down to mold life and character (see Proverbs 7:1-3). Wisdom concerns what God has revealed about the proper values of life and how they might be achieved. Proverbs is about ethics; it presents a way of thinking about reality that enables one to pursue what is good in life. Proverbs 2:2 refers to the combined need for heart knowledge and head knowledge to find true wisdom. The fool can have head knowledge but is without heart knowledge; often the fool has neither. Man must work to learn and practice morality, but ultimately the source is God, who alone gives wisdom, understanding, and justice.

Finding wisdom is a process; the wise person accumulates more (Proverbs 9:9) and the fool rejects it, to his suffering. Chapter 8, which uses the literary device of personifying Wisdom, claims that the fear of the Lord is essential for finding wisdom—any search for an ethic based solely on experience is futile. The ethic of Proverbs involves recognition of an absolute standard of right, goodness, and truth. It is not consistent with a postmodern, relativist approach. It involves duties combined with what philosophers refer to as virtue ethics, with deeds related to personal moral character (see Proverbs 12:17). Proverbs 2 explains that proper or Godly wisdom derives from the moral character of God; the character of God is the basis of morality.

Proverbs, and Hebraic wisdom literature overall, notes a general cause-effect relationship between lifestyles and their outcomes. It observes these from natural patterns of human experience but, more basically, from the worldview perspective that the ultimate order of Nature is as a consequence of God’s just rule (see Proverbs 13:21). The upright, those with diligence as a virtue, are contrasted with the lazy that are condemned to trouble, ignorance, and death (e.g., Proverbs 15).

The ethical themes in Proverbs include warning concerning sins of the tongue, pride, and self-satisfaction. A great promise is that following God’s way produces reconciliation and healing of personal relationships (Proverbs 16:7). Proverbs recommends ways that a man, often as the leader, can be benefited and also benefit others. In communication, kind words, refusing to use slander, calm deliberation, and overlooking the verbal offenses of others all tend to bring peace, whereas the opposite responses bring turmoil.

A summary proverb is 29:18, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps the Law.” The overall message of Proverbs (31:30, 31) is that true wisdom is found in the life lived in wholehearted obedience to God’s revelation, in honest observation of His created order but also in faithful following of his scriptures.

Those engaged in business practice also might find helpful Hersey H. Friedman’s “Creating a Company Code of Ethics: Using the Bible as a Guide” (2003). Friedman seeks to use the entire Old Testament to develop a code of ethics that can be used by any firm. He lists 12 important principles derived from the Bible that can be used to establish the moral justification of a corporate code of ethics. His article exemplifies how one can tie the ethical insights from scripture to areas of contemporary practical application.

Whatever is one’s calling in life, reading the Proverbs is a great habit to develop. It is a most enjoyable way to grow and a most helpful guide for living wisely.

 

References

Friedman, Hersey H.: 2003. “Creating a Company Code of Ethics: Using the Bible as a

Guide”. Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies. 8(1).

Retrieved January 30, 2004 from http//ejbo.jyu.fi.

Marshall, Tom: 2003. Understanding Leadership. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Sanders, J. Oswald: 1994. Spiritual Leadership. Chicago: Moody Press.

 

The Reformation Study Bible (The New King James Version) 1995. Nashville, TN:

Thomas Nelson Publishers.