666 - A Virtuous Life In Business: Stories of Courage and Integrity in the Corporate World

A Virtuous Life In Business: Stories of Courage and Integrity in the Corporate World
By Oliver F. Williams and John W. Houck, Editors
Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1992. 185 pp. $18.95.

How is virtue best promoted in a corporate culture? In this series of essays we are told that storytelling is the means of understanding virtue. Moreover, it is the stories of individuals that illuminate the portrait of the corporate person.

Businesses, like other organizations, live and die by the stories that are told about their leaders. An important question, therefore, is, In which story and in which values should we invest our lives? The essayists elaborate on Johnson and Johnson's handling of the Tylenol scare, in which chief executive James Burke placed the interests of customers and the community ahead of corporate profits and stock price. Contrast this with the portrait of Salomon Brothers, described in Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker, in which greed and arrogance nearly brought the firm to ruin.

As Christians, we are reminded that it is the Jesus story that allows us to understand the values of the corporate body we call the church. Moreover, as business managers we gain a clearer picture of self and personal ambition by comprehending his story. Just as the Jesus story begins with an understanding of the past, that is, Abraham and Moses, so, too, do business stories require us to understand Edison, Ford, Watson, Hewlett, Gates, and all the others whose virtue was promoted in the culture of their corporations.

David M Mace
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ.