Management and the Gospel

Citation

Clive Saunders Beed (2016), "Management and the Gospel", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 221-222. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-07-2014-0153

Bruno Dyck sets himself the herculean task of analysing the normative implications of the gospel of Luke in the New Testament for contemporary management practice. He does this by investigating what Jesus’ teachings in Luke might have meant to his hearers in first-century Palestine, and then carries these implications into the twenty-first century. Dyck’s findings are quite radical for the present century. He counterposes what he calls “Kingdom of God” (KOG) ethics against the prevailing mode of economic behaviour (“acquisitive economics”). Dyck illustrates KOG behaviour via examples of specific entrepreneur and firm behaviour. For example, the owner of Malden Mills Industries responded counterculturally when the factory was burnt to the ground. The factory was rebuilt with the 3,000 workers kept on the payroll. Unfortunately, the firm went bankrupt in 2001.

The relevance of Luke’s ethics is indicated only in an indirect manner for all the examples Dyck cites. The owner of Malden Mills was not Christian but Jewish, with no evidence that he was aware of Luke. Jesus’ ethics related to governance can be taken a lot further than Dyck. For example, they imply democratic decision making within the firm, as analysed by Beed and Beed (2011). If this had happened within Malden Mills, perhaps it would not have gone bankrupt. Dyck cites the Grameen Bank as running on “ideas consistent with KOG management”. Worthy as the activity of Grameen is, it cannot be claimed to be influenced by Luke, with Moslem influence more likely.

A third operational example is the 750 businesses operating worldwide as the “Economy of Communion” (EOC). Of the three examples, this is the most relevant to Luke, having been constructed in a Christian context. Dyck contends that EOC has an “explicit grounding in Luke’s writings”, but EOC’s connection with Luke remains at a general level. Similar patterns are described for the firms of Semco, Wiens Shared Farming, Interface, and for particular individual entrepreneurs. For all the examples, the specific contribution of Luke’s ethics to their operation needed to be clarified more closely. There is no question that all the cited firms are behaving in ways consistent with Luke’s ideas. However, other influences have probably been important in these enterprises. For example, the founder of Interface was influenced by Paul Hawken’s, The Ecology of Commerce. Nor is there evidence that the protagonists in the cited firms (EOC aside) were Christian or so influenced. One of the difficulties in following Dyck’s argument is that the book is divided into parts and chapters. Within chapters, numbered groups, phases, and forward and reverse cycles are sometimes specified. Phases occur within cycles, and action (phases) taken by entrepreneurs, while consistent with Luke, was probably consistent also with enlightened secular influence.

The role of Jesus Christ tends to be underplayed in Dyck’s emphasis on Luke. The analysis proceeds as though Luke was the author of Jesus’ sayings, particularly of the New Testament parables cited. Partly, this is due to Dyck’s reliance on the social science school of biblical investigation (Malina, etc.). This is enmeshed in biblical analysis as though it was relevant and had meaning only for the times when it was written. Dyck gives great weight to this method but it is of little use to discern the relevance of biblical thought to the present age. Relying on the social scientific school produces analyses of the cited parables as though their first century meaning was different from the twenty-first century. For example, analysing Luke’s (read Jesus) Parable of the Ten Pounds (Luke 19:12-27) via a “first-century management lens leads to interpretations that seem foreign from a common twenty-first-century perspective” (p. 49). A consensus of biblical exegetes (outside the social scientific school) does not draw this difference. It deduces meaning for the twenty-first century that is consistent with the first century. There is no “common twenty-first century perspective”, in terms of Dyck interpretations of the parable.

There is no question that Jesus’ teaching on governance in Luke is of a countercultural and radical nature compared to prevailing modes in the twenty-first century. Dyck is to be praised for venturing into this area, even though the scarcity of contemporary examples of businesses practicing biblical guidelines inhibits his purpose. Nonetheless, he shows forcefully that biblical guidelines are applicable to the present economic world, and that their practice would not undermine economic performance.