Catholic Social Teaching and the Org Chart

When we think about living our faith, we certainly think of loving our neighbor in the context of our family, friends, and church community. We give charitably to worthy causes, or maybe volunteer in some fashion. Or perhaps we extend our understanding of living our faith to the political realm as it informs our discussions of how best to structure society.
But what of the corporate structure? Does Catholic social teaching have anything to say about how to best structure a company? The answer to this must be a definite yes.

If our faith is to influence all parts of our life we need to look to the teaching of our faith when creating a business model. The notion of subsidiarity which is found in Catholic social teaching is one such idea that can be used to drive how a business should be organized.

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The Priority of Life

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!… All rivers go to the sea… To the place where they go… the rivers keep on going.

I remember as a youth how this affected me so much, this idea of the rivers, always going “to the place where they go”, all the water… we always end up there. (A river in Idaho, the Salmon, the “River of No Return”, I remember thinking how all rivers are “rivers of no return”…)  It was an enigma to me as a young boy and a young man. Fascinating ….but terrifying.

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Christian Decision Making: Four Rules of Discernment

We all have times in our life, whether in our professional life or our family life, when we need to make decisions: every day small decisions but also major life changing ones. Choosing one path by necessity closes others.  In our business life, we gather data do a cost-benefit analysis, conference with key stakeholders and hopefully make a good decision. In our personal life the process may be less formal but is essentially the same.  

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Gratitude for Competitors How To Be Happy In Your Work part 5

Finally, we come to the most challenging type of work-neighbor of all—our competitors—the ones we’re allowed to despise. They threaten our livelihoods, take market share that belongs to us, force us to lower prices or raise quality—in other words, they create all kinds of havoc in what would otherwise be a smooth-running business. If there is one group of people we would eradicate off the face of the earth if we could, it would be our competitors.

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Gratitude for Colleagues How To Be Happy In Your Work part 4

And now let us turn to a slightly more challenging type of work-neighbor, the people we work with and for—our colleagues.

No doubt about it, we’ve all made some of the best friends of our lives at work and met people we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy, but like them or not, these people are absolutely essential to our organizations and to our success as individuals. We’ve all had the experience of trying to cope when a critical person is out sick or a function shuts down—especially when it’s payroll or IT. Just as when we break our little toe, we suddenly realize how much we needed all five of them to walk smoothly after all.

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