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Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business

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Malloch argues that business, at its best, is virtuous and that business is the place where "virtue is to be found in the modern world" (19). This is a ambitious claim. Malloch includes cases of exemplary companies in an appendix, but for the main text relies on a host of great thinkers stretching back to Plato and Aristotle to defend it. This was probably a mistake.

Admittedly I've not read all (or even most) of the books that Malloch mentions. However, I take comfort from the fact that, based on his treatment of those I have read, neither has Malloch. For example, Malloch cites Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue, without noting that in the very book he cites, MacIntyre spends entire sections laying out why the business corporation stands opposed to his understanding of virtue. Malloch cites Tocqueville on the importance of association and suggests that businesses can fill that role without noting that Tocqueville disagreed. In one of the few sections in Democracy in America where Tocqueville mentions business he argues that companies can form no "genuine association."

This kind of slippage between his representation of scholars and the reality of what they said is apparent whenever I found Malloch moving into territory I am familiar with. At best this book is sloppy, at worst dishonest, and either way it is thoroughly pretentious.

I am sympathetic to the impulse behind this book. I think business is a moral endeavor too, but this view is not furthered by ignoring or misrepresenting the objections of people you wish were allies. Authorship is a moral endeavor too.

Doing Virtuous Business by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is an excellent book that presents the theory that creating wealth through virtuous means is a Biblically sound principle.

The book explores how companies that follow an ethical business model often perform at a higher level than their competitors.

This will be an excellent book for those that have the notion that capitalism is inherently evil as it presents the idea that business conducted ethically is actually a virtue.

Those in business as entrepreneurs will gain valuable information from this book to use in their day-to-day operations.

I would quickly recommend this book to anyone that studies business or has an interest in learning more about businesses that operate in a Biblically ethical way.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

That is a powerful statement, and the key question to examine here is: do companies have a spirit? According to Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, yes they do. And this spirit has been behaving very bad, at least for some large companies. For sure, it is always the bad news that spread around the fastest.

Every time we talk about companies or capitalism, the bad examples are mentioned over and over, as WorldCom, Enron, Adelphia and others. Why? We need to remember that large corporations are not the only ones that exist, as most of the companies in the world are small and medium size, and they also have a spirit.

Your company has a spirit.

Examining everything, rejecting what is bad and doing what is good should be a great way of living our lives, and that is a good motto for companies as well. Is your company doing good? Is your company behaving according to its values?

Sir John Templeton was a key motivator for this project, and its Foundation was one of the key benefactors.

This book is not for everybody, read it, and you will enjoy it if you are open to discuss new ideas and be reminded on why doing business is good.

Disclosure: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program and was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. The review was based on the ebook version.

Doing Virtuous Business: The Remarkable Success of Spiritual Enterprise by Theodore Malloch is a great tool for anyone interested in not only increasing their ability as a business person but also as a pursuer of God. The book investigates this concept of how capitalism within our social constructs creates a an atmosphere for progress in the business world. Malloch expresses how one's "spiritual enterprise" causes effects one how one conducts business because of the changes in one's ethics and character. If one builds a spiritual enterprise where good morals and virtue are expressed one's actions will reflect their moral strength. For example, if one builds forgiveness and honesty as part of their "spiritual enterprise" they are more likely to provide forgiveness for those who transgress them. This book is a very practical tool for all people because it shows how one's spiritual condition is able to affect their daily life. Also, it inspires one to fine tune their "spiritual enterprise" so that they will be able to conduct better business. The only thing that Malloch infers which was hard to cope with was how he expected the spiritual values to appear in modern culture. This is hard to unify with a world of no absolutes in which people are all inherently evil.

Theodore Malloch writes about the virtues faced in a free economy through a Christian perspective based hard and soft virtues expressed by faith, hope, and skepticism. This is a book about modeling balance and purpose in the "real world" of mainstream corporate America. Social capitalism is addressed along with views towards an ever changing global economy.

"The Greeks saw chastity as a part of temperance-but were non too clear as to what it required in men. We now make no distinction between men and women, and require the same restraint, while allowing the same permission, to both. Hence it is all the more important, in business as in other fields, to maintain the king of boundaries that enable people to enjoy just and charitable relations that are protected from sexual invasion."-pg. 40

Although, the book is based in Christian morals there is not a ton of evidence to support the religious viewpoints. The book highlights various corporations that have instilled these virtues mentioned in the book, but there is no real example of Christian values within the companies. I found the book to be quite difficult to continue reading because of the lack of support for addressing the issue of small businesses. I would recommend this book to a person in the corporate field with their own company. I enjoyed the basic concepts of the book, but felt there needed to be more biblical references to support the Christian viewpoint.

Doing Virtuous Business: The Remarkable Success of Spiritual Enterprise

By: Theodore Roosevelt Malloch

Thomas Nelson Publishers©2008

Exposing the pitfalls and benefits of Capitalism - Malloch aptly shows readers how business enterprise is the best, if not the only way to empower the poor of the world to success. Beginning with Michael Novak's forward, we begin to understand why - and better yet how we can activate true success through spiritual enterprise. Success - not just for ourselves, or for those who invest in the good idea; but for those we employ, their families, and the clients we serve who are seeking with us, a new and better way of living.
Malloch addresses, yet cuts between the slippery slope of self-interest (corporate scandal & deterioration) - and the exhausting road of self-sacrificing humanitarianism. I've been encouraged to build a truly Spiritual Enterprise that will be adventurous and productive - benefitting every stakeholder along the way to success - from the top-down and from the inside, out.

In Know Can Do!: Put Your Know-How Into Action, co-author Ken Blanchard suggests that to leverage the power of repetition, repetition, repetition--you should read a book four times. That leadership counsel would definitely apply to this book. You won't get the breadth and the depth in one reading.

The recent earthquake in Haiti arrests our senses and prompts us to face many of the big issues of life, death, poverty and sustainability. (Why has Haiti never turned the corner?) With that numbing backdrop, Ted Malloch's unique treatment of "spiritual enterprise" gave me hope again--yet with heavy-duty substance.

Malloch begins, "For years, I've paid close attention to something that fascinates me--the ability of people with religious faith and spiritual commitment to make great successes of their businesses. Success comes to them, I believe, because faith changes business for the better, just as it changes lives. It injects into business something that I call `spiritual capital.' Agnostics and nonbelievers make use of spiritual capital as well, but only people of faith renew it. And by replenishing spiritual capital, they benefit us all."

If you're a nonprofit leader or pastor, don't skip this book. You can mentor your business colleagues (and donors) more deeply by understanding Malloch's themes of understanding "spiritual capital" and what he calls the hard virtues (leadership, courage, patience, perseverance and discipline) and the soft virtues (justice, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude and humility).

If you're a business leader, you'll especially appreciate the author's "Gallery of Virtuous Companies" including ServiceMaster (faith), PepsiCo (honesty), Chick-fil-A (gratitude), IBM (perseverance), Icon Productions (compassion) and seven more.

Malloch argues that entrepreneurship is a key to all of this. "It is important to emphasize that what is true of the virtuous creation of wealth in developed countries is also true in underdeveloped countries." He adds, "Development requires economic growth; in turn, growth requires the catalytic drive of the entrepreneur, and entrepreneurship exists only where freedom of action is combined with personal responsibility. In all its myriad forms, accountability is a spiritual asset that is forged by faith that inspires and governs it, and it does not easily come into being in other ways."

Reminder: you'll want to read this multiple times. And you may want to weigh your giving to the very long-term Haiti relief effort against a matrix of criteria that includes hard and soft virtues, plus a healthy dose of entrepreneurship.

As Michael Novak, author of Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life, writes in the foreword, "Businesses similarly are the world's best hope for democracy. If democracy gave people the opportunity to vote for their leaders regularly but offered them no chance to improve their economic condition, they would find democracy very hard to love. What people rightly love about democracy is the economic opportunity and prosperity it can bring them. It is democratic capitalism, not merely democracy, that they understand to be worthy of their devotion, energy and practice."