Virtuous Enterprises: the Place of Christian Ethics

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There are certainly many ways of writing a paper about the intersection of business and theology. On the one hand, simply describing the different models of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the business world and, on the other, summarizing those Bible passages that mention business in some way, which certainly would be an interesting if rather unfocussed method. Given these various methodological approaches methodology, I have decided to focus on the normative question of Christian ethics. Initially, with a less than theological approach, I shall ask if companies should have a moral obligation to implement CSR; and if so, how this could look in practice without taking an excessively naïve approach.

Christian, corporate and collective responsibility

The term ‘responsibility’ is derived from the Latin ‘responsabilis’, which means the ability to respond to the obligations and expectations of others. To recognize these responsibilities, managers tend to use a mixture of intuition and rationality. But is it true that only individual persons can be responsible, as they have a conscience? In this context, it is certainly much easier for medium-sized and small companies to live virtuously according to the principles of CSR then it is for bigger companies.

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