Introduction
Theology
is life! As a priest coming from an African background (Nigeria), with a
theology that teaches a sharp separation of the spiritual world from the
profane has been maintained, the teaching of business ethics in churches
becomes a necessary 
panacea.
Nigeria is a country where more than 60
percent of the citizens are Christians. It is a country where the leaders of
the Churches are listened to and where a lot of changes for the better are
initiated. A thorough survey of the business situation in the country only goes
to prove the fact that we lack a proper business ethics in the business sector.
This lack, I have come to realise, is not wilful. It is simply a question of
ignorance and/or unthoughtfulness.� Even for the clergy themselves, this topic
may be a discomforting one, which has led more or less to a decline of
ecclesiastical influence in this area. This paper is therefore an attempt to
marry the Christian commitment with the practice and ethics of business. It is
a challenge to reawaken the issue of business ethics in ecclesiastical quarters
so that the society could be bettered than what it is at the moment in the
Nigerian society. More so, I am posed to challenge the traditional schism
between the spheres of faith and business. This challenge is intensified in the
words of Anton van Niekerk, that, �the rise of an industrial economy and the
collapse of traditional religion are two of the most important hallmarks of our
time�.� What are the implications of Christian
commitment for the practice and ethics of business? What does it really mean to
be witnesses of Christ in the world? Is this world only the spiritual realm or
can we really be witnesses even in the world of business? These and similar
questions will help us bring the point home in this expose.
The Notion of Business
One general impression about business
for most people is that it is synonymous with profit. This does not mean to say
that business should be devoid of profit making. However business is more than
that. There are two essential elements in any adequate definition of business,
the provision of goods and services, and the fact that it is done with the
intention of making profit.
The first of these shows business� continuity with various human activities by
which life has been sustained and enhanced through the ages and enables us to
understand business in relation to the larger society. The second deals with a
more specific characteristic and sets business off from the other activities by
revealing its distinctive internal dynamic. So business, says J. Verstraeten,
�is just more than a society of capital goods, it is also a society and
community of persons.�� It is the human persons who engage in
business and who are equally consumers of the product of business. For business
to be meaningful and thus serve the purpose for which it is meant, means that
ethics and business must have an interplay.
Business Ethics
Many misconceptions abound about Business
Ethics. For some, business ethics is a kind of redundant discipline because it
starts with assumptions. Some see confusion existing between the level of moral
judgement and the legal solution to problems. Because of this very fact, ethics
seems to be reduced to compliance with the law. However we know that moral
behaviour can be hidden behind the compliance with the law. Some have viewed
business ethics as a kind of American ethics, which is to a large extent
correct, since the first conference on business ethics was held in America
(1974), the period, which saw the rise of engineering ethics.� But, over and above this is the fact that the
history of business ethics is traceable to the Bible, to St Thomas Aquinas
and even to the 18th century period. Some are even of the opinion
that too much ethics is not good for business. We also know that empirical
studies have proven that companies, which use ethical codes, have better
results than those without codes or ethical dimension.
Today the relevance of business ethics
in society cannot be overemphasised. It forms the core of any enterprise.
In one of his articles,
Ignacio Sorauren, quoting P�rez Lop�z, writes that enterprises have three
dimensions:
v Effectiveness:
referring to the capacity of the firm to make profit and achieve strategic
goals.
v Efficiency: referring
to the capacity of the firm to improve its production process. This depends on
improving the capacities of the employees, via learning how to do better their
duties
v Consistency: referring
to the degree of unity in the firm. This is the dimension that provides a
common objective and makes people to work hard for the enterprise when it is
required.
These dimensions according to P�rez Lop�z can be realised
by humans working in these firms. For maximum input resulting to maximum
profit, the behavioural patterns of workers must be considered. In other words,
what are the motives behind what we do? For Lop�z, the motives are three:
v Extrinsic motives: when the reasons of
the actions are external to them and to the person who undertakes the action,
then, the reason why people do the action is not the action itself, but the
utility or advantage obtained from it. For instance, when people work only for
the retribution. This does not mean that people should not act with extrinsic
motives, but it must not be the only reason for their actions
v Intrinsic motives: when the reasons for
the action are internal to the person who undertakes the action. Therefore, it implies
that people work because they are interested in what they are doing, because
they like their work. And this is because when somebody does something he
learns how to do it, so that the outcome of his actions benefits him. This
makes possible the intrinsic motives: the personal improvement resulting from
action. And this is the reason why it is possible to enjoy working.
v Transcendental motives: when somebody works
taking into account the consequences of his action on other people- for
instance, the good of other people, then he has transcendental motives. It is
not enough to improve oneself in working, it is necessary to work for other
person.
Lop�z, as it were, has incorporated
ethics as a necessary tool in any business venture. Writing in 1998, J.
Verstraeten remarked that business ethics seems today more problematic than
about 10 years ago and this is as a consequence of international competition,
deregulation, liberalisation and pressure from the financial markets.
Business ethics, in its most elementary form is therefore an investigation of
the factual options, values and behavioural patterns of business people,
managers and employees, as well as the factual consequences of ethical or
unethical behaviour in the business enterprise. Such empirical research has in
recent years provided some interesting results, which, in general terms tend to
support the hypothesis that ethical behaviour makes good business sense.� The advertising industry for instance lures
people into buying things that they would rather not buy because often they
realise that they do not need those things. Profit motives seem to range higher
than any other motives in business. Often times, the most successful businesses
are those that make the biggest profits. And this very mentality has resulted
from the fact that for most business organisations, especially in the developed
world, the sky seems to be the limit. And this is of course not without the
exploitation of the workers. The capitalist world is today, more than ever obsessed
with the idea of making as much profit as possible. Life has become business
itself and for many business companies, the idea is to make as much profit as
possible at the least cost even when this will entail a downsizing. In Nigeria,
the story is not much different. The quest for profit making is rather a canker
worm that has eaten deep in the entire system. It is a survival of the fittest.
It is a situation where the end justifies the means. People resort to all types
of dubious activities to make money. These ill-ways include bribery, to sell
for instance expired drugs to the public, the giving of �present� as a way to
getting a contract or employment, nepotism, in the sense of favouring one�s
family members or company, etc. These and more ugly pictures are true in
Nigeria.
I am only beginning to think that the situation has become what it is today as
a result of a lacuna that was left vacant by the clergy in the various
Christian denominations in Nigeria. Probably as a �legacy� from the
missionaries and partly too as a result of the type of formation these clergy
men/women receive, they tend to exclude all concerns of business from pastoral
ministry.
Business in Nigeria
The capitalist world that has been
created in the west is fast spreading to the rest of the world. Nigeria is no
exception. We are confused by the consequences of capitalism, whose
contribution cannot be doubted, but which divides rich from poor, consumes so
much of the energies of those who work in it without leading to a contented world.
Nevertheless, the new trend of turning everything into business, even our own
lives, doesn�t seem to be the answer.
There are a few multinational companies existent in Nigeria. These include:
Shell BP, Agip PLC, Mobil Ltd, UAC, Coka Cola PLC, etc. A greater number of
other businesses are owned and managed by Nigerians. A good number of these
business corporations started as a �one-man show� before it developed into what
could be called a corporation. This is especially true in most of the businesses
located in the southeast of Nigeria. A very particular example is the
Nnewi� region, where almost every other
family has a business enterprise. Initially, the members of a family begin a
particular business and as it grows, more hands are needed and consequently
employed. The managers of these firms automatically become the initiators of
these business enterprises. They set out the aims and goals of these
corporations and employ whoever suits them. For many of these corporations,
there are no particular criteria for employment of workers, neither are there
stipulated salary scales for the workers. All of these depend on each worker�s
arrangements with the managers. Most of these corporations have no insurance
policies for workers and/or remuneration as regards pension. The question here
is, �how can we talk of business ethics in such corporations that have set down
their own objectives without any contractual consent on the part of the
workers? How would the workers come to know that they too have rights and not
only obligations? This is where I think and am convinced too that the teaching
of business ethics by the clergy in the Nigerian Church is imperative. Helping
business people in the Church makes the Monday Connection that is, bringing
what they learn on Sunday to bear in their work lives on Monday, is one of the
least studied areas in Christian education.
Harry van Buren maintains that if Churches do not help Christians make the
Monday connection, then they are of little use to their members especially when
an overwhelming number believe in God (as is the case in Nigeria).
Inadequate Support of the Church for
Business People
At their best, Churches can call people
to higher visions of life. The civil rights movement of the 1960s, for example,
gained much strength because of the actions undertaken by laity and clergy
alike.
The Church�s influence on society comes from speech and action, not silence.
The Church in Nigeria is guilty of this �silence� in the face of massive
exploitation of workers. It is therefore imperative for the Nigerian Church to
develop policy statements addressing economic matters, socially responsible
investment of institutional funds, macroeconomics, the environment, and the
relationship between the business sector and the society to name but a few.
Harry van Buren enumerates three factors that are responsible for the decline
of ecclesiastical influence over how Christians make ethical decisions in the
workplace:
v Specialisation of
careers:
where the Church believes it has become harder for outsiders to unambiguously
establish what is ethical for a particular professional subspecialty. Many
professions have developed their own standards of conduct, although such
self-policed standards are not always rigorous or well-enforced.
As a comment on this point, Faith on the
contrary should influence economic behaviour in ways that are decidedly fluid, personalistic, relativistic, situational and psychological.
v
The mobility of workers: where the Church feels that people
frequently move from job to job and from career to career, making it almost
difficult to build the close long term relationship that would make her feel
comfortable asking others for ethical advice. Perhaps the same social trend
explains the lack of discussions about ethics in general and business ethics in
particular.
Churches however, are natural forums for
such discussions and they should foster same about ethical issues. Although
Churches are not only ethical institutions, they however function best when
people can be brought together to talk about spiritual and ethical issues.
v
Clergy discomfort with the subject of business ethics: Ministers are
uncomfortable with raising contentious issues in their preaching and teaching
activities. More so is the fear of upsetting some parishioners. Lacking close
personal relationship with parishioners, ministers often resort to vague
homilies instead of trying to find ways to help their parishioners analyze
business ethics and economic issues from faith perspective.
This is a very big challenge especially
for Church ministers in Nigeria. The implications of faith for work or for the
handling of money have often been ignored by religious leaders. In most cases
the clergy have discussed these issues in such general terms that believers
were left to make their own decisions based on what felt most comfortable at
the moment in question. The Church by her very mission is called to help shape
individual and communal beliefs about what is good and just. Sometimes,
ministers are afraid to preach and teach about social issues, which are often
controversial and divisive. Congregants are often reticent to messages that
challenge their practices and beliefs, or that make them feel uncomfortable.
But should this fact stop the clergy from doing their work? The homily is one
chance every week (for congregants who come only on Sundays) that a minister
has to challenge the congregation to think about important social, cultural and
economic issues. This opportunity is most of the time wasted in expounding the
doctrine of one eschatological reality or another. Very often too, worship
offers general guidelines with little or no exploration about how the basic
tenets of faith can be applied to daily life. Worship does not address business
ethics and other social issues because they would not push faith out of the
realm of general moral strivings into the messy world of making moral choices
and applying religious beliefs to specific life circumstances.
Towards a
Business Ethics Curriculum
I believe that some form of educational model is
needed to help the clergy everywhere to feel comfortable with discussing
business ethical problems, especially as many of them do not have an economic
or business background. A business ethics curriculum model should also help
parishioners feel comfortable with talking about personal issues in an open
forum and equip them with a language about morals. This curriculum is more
urgent today more than ever when we realise that business and Church need each
other. If faith is to have any meaning, it must help believers think about the
moral and ethical dilemmas in their lives.
In this line, Harry van Buren has argued in his
article that a business ethics curriculum should contain provisions for both a
formal Sunday-school curriculum and support groups in which professionals can
meet to discuss particular business situations. This very point is very crucial
in the Nigerian situation. The support group can challenge its members to
analyze moral dilemmas from a Christian/ethical context. This model curriculum
includes opportunities for clergy and laity to learn from each other. Experts
in different fields are given the opportunity to express what would be most
beneficial to the human race. It will above all, be an occasion to correct some
misconceptions of managers in relation to business management. By creating an
environment where everybody in the Church is both a teacher and a learner, a
business-ethics programme can be model for how Church members can work together
as a community to address social, political and cultural issues. In the
catholic tradition, most often this Sunday school takes the form of evening
catechetical instructions where, in the Nigerian situation, the readings of the
day are further elaborated or other heavenly realities explained. The Anglicans
and other denominations are better in this direction. There should therefore be
a rethinking of our theology in Nigeria by the different denominations. An
encounter with a group of business people could reveal a lot of how much or how
little they know of theology, scripture, and Church history and also how
limited their language about ethics is. As described above, the ethics of
business for most people in Nigeria is nothing short of profit even at the
expense of the other (workers). The Churches should be able to help people
define philosophical and theological concepts to better appreciate what they do
and how they think. Although no introduction to philosophy and theology can
fully cover the field, exposing class participants to such concepts early in
the curriculum will be helpful for later examinations of ethical issues.
Theology as the basic foundation of Christian ethics is necessary for any
introduction to the latter subject. The methodology could be to start from an
individual�s decision�making processes and ethical dilemmas to outward analyses
of firms, industries and national economies. This will help the individual to
conceptualise his or her own ethical struggles before moving to a larger
economic/ productive units that are harder to analyze. In addition to this is
the possibility of bringing one�s life experiences as a businessperson to the
Sunday school for analysis and discussion. Participants, with the help of the
minister will be able to learn how to think about issues like equal employment
opportunity from a faith perspective. The goal of this endeavour is not to
teach participants the right answers, but rather to teach them a process by
which they can theologically analyze ethical issues in business through the
prisms of theology, religious tradition and communal beliefs.
The Ethics
Support Group
Business ethics is not just concerned with
identifying the right action but also with doing the right thing. It is one thing
to identify alternatives that meet ethical criteria and quite another to
implement a particular solution. The ultimate purpose of business ethics
education programme in Churches should be to equipped people with the
analytical tools needed to help them identify and carry out the best action in
a particular situation. In this sense, support groups that meet on a regular
basis to discuss work situations and to offer assistance to group members are
therefore important. They could address issues like just wages for workers,
employment benefits, social security of workers, spirituality of the managers,
advertisement, etc.
The Task Ahead
When the Churches do not help their members think
through how the gospel affects their lives as employees, it gives up its
rightful place as a social institution that shapes our beliefs about goodness
and justice. Harry suspects that much of the difficulty in talking about
business ethics in Churches arises from the use of different languages in
conversations- the language of economics and commerce is quite different from
the language of theology.
But it is also true that the language of economics can inform the language of
religion and vice versa. The problem in the Nigerian society is that the two
languages have been separated for a long time that a reunion looks almost
absurd. But we can also take consolation in the fact that the Church has also
provided us with theological basis for this reunion. Evangelii Nuntiandi
of Paul VI advocates that the Good News be brought into all the strata of
humanity and the lives and concrete milieu, which is theirs.
This �strata of humanity�, which Paul VI mentions in this Apostolic
Exhortation, means that nothing should be left out in the work of evangelising
the human person. Everything that has to do with the human person, from his or
her religion to social concerns becomes an object of evangelisation. Hence, it
is probable that the 1971 Synod Fathers, based on this new insight on
evangelisation, taught that �action on behalf of justice and participation in
the transformation of the world (including business world) fully appear
to us as constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel, or in other
words, of the Church�s mission for the redemption of the human race and its
liberation from every oppressive situation.�
This �constitutive dimension� implies that business
concerns are not secondary in the Church�s commitment to the human person
rather they are indispensable elements of human existence. Spiritual mission
and business concerns are inseparably tied together.
The Church�s mission should be integral. Her prophetic aspect implies that she
finds meaning or the absence of meaning in what goes on in the world. The world
of everyday experience is the focus of her action and understanding. What we
know about God has in the orientation of the church, profound implications for
the way in which we should live our lives. Conversely, the way in which we live
affects the way in which God is known and glorified. The way our lives are
conducted either facilitates or hinders the advent of his kingdom. To deny
business of any ethics in today�s capitalist world is tantamount to saying that
Christian commitment can divorce itself from awareness of the needs of the
poor, the outcasts, and the voiceless. A Christianity that has turned
completely bourgeois, that usurps and internalises in its entirety the moralist
and interest of the influent part of society, looses an essential element of
the identity that Christ bestows on us. This is a challenge for the church in
Nigeria and it is imperative too.
Bibliography
DIEHL, W. E., The Monday Connection: On being an authentic
Christian in a Weekday World, San Francisco, 1991.
���������
Justice in the World, in O�BRIEN, D, & SHANNON, T. A., Catholic
Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, Maryknoll, 1992.
VERSTRAETEN, J., From Business Ethics
to the Vocation of Business Leaders to Humanize the World of Business, in, Business
Ethics: A European Review, 7
(April 1998) 2, 111 � 124.�