Monday

Myspace relationship will be the most recent to burst on the asiame coupon world within the big field of dating applications.

Fresh off a separation and divorce, Ken Falk is using dating applications attain right back nowadays.

So when the 39-year-old Blacklick resident is lately motivated by Facebook to create a dating visibility, the guy decided he’d have a shot. But so far he’s got become relatively unimpressed with myspace Dating.

“With the amount of facts that myspace keeps . these include positioned to create best matches,” Falk stated. “But I’ll just say that my experience will not be that. The knowledge was style of random also it around appears to ignore your preferences.”

Myspace relationships could be the current to burst regarding world inside huge arena of online dating applications, signing up for the ranks of already well-established software like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge in the $3-billion-a-year business.

“People have used myspace for online dating so long as Facebook has been in existence,” mentioned Kathryn Coduto, a communications doctoral beginner at Ohio State institution. “I don’t realize that millennials will need Twitter Dating because we’re very much accustomed towards software there is and millennials aren’t actually the #1 consumer of fb.”

Fb Online dating officially founded for the U.S. on Sept. 5 after becoming tried in Colombia, South America. Myspace reported creating about 1.59 billion day-to-day active customers normally for Summer 2019 therefore the business launched strategies for Fb Dating back in May 2018, stating men and women currently incorporate Twitter in order to satisfy new people and it also wished to make the event better yet.

Though still new, many individuals whine the application seems also fundamental.

“It’s only a little underwhelming up until now,” mentioned 23-year-old Tyler Hall of Hilliard. “i desired to give it an attempt to discover how it’s any distinctive from additional software I’ve experimented with previously.”

Continue reading →

If you are going for the best absolutely free vpn, you should already know the truth. First, they often can come with various hidden service fees. You will obtain ads shot into your web site or, worse still, your personal device being used as a getaway path for various other internet users to attack you. When you could possibly get anonymous proksy service, there is no chance that anyone can easily trace back to where you came from or in which you are now. Second, this is not a real service provided by the us government or the cops. This is a form of program which has been developed by personal companies when you use ordinary internet surfers like us.

The best free of charge vpn provider that we would probably recommend is certainly ProtonVpn. This provider provides the very best features and performance among all the other types of anonymous proxy servers. ProtonVpn does not work with hop limits or retransmits so you can easily visit as many websites as you want to. In addition to that, their computers do not have interconnection limitations to help you connect as much devices just like you want together.

SurfShark is another top recommended anonymous serwery proxy server. Yet , the best characteristic which makes SurfShark stand above other options is the fact that it presents both DNS and IP hiding. Therefore while SurfShark may be suitable for limiting the bandwidth, it will also make sure that no-one will be able to know back to you when they surf on-line. Unlike ProtonVpn, SurfShark would not use any pop-up adverts, but it truly does allow get through the use of Catastrophe and is also ideal for vpn ads saving bandwidth. However , to enable SurfShark to work correctly and for all of us to enjoy its greatest features, we should install on our computers an item of spyware known as the SurfShark spyware.

Корпоративное поглощение украинского сельского хозяйства.

В отчете «Прогулки по западной стороне: Всемирный https://censor.net/ru/tag/5841/bahmatyuk банк и МВФ в украинском конфликте», опубликованном в июле 2014 года, Оклендский институт показал, как международные финансовые институты напали вслед за политическими потрясениями в Украине, чтобы дерегулировать и раскрыть обширный сельскохозяйственный сектор страны для иностранных корпораций.

Этот информационный бюллетень содержит подробную информацию о транснациональных агропредприятиях, которые все больше инвестируют в Украину, включая Monsanto, Cargill и DuPont, а также о том, как корпорации берут на себя все аспекты аграрной системы Украины. Это включает в себя обход земельных мораторий, инвестирование в объекты по производству семян и вводимых ресурсов, а также приобретение объектов по производству, переработке и транспортировке товаров.

COMMON-SENSE BUSINESS: PRINCIPLES FOR PROFITABLE LEADERSHIP THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH

“Has the potential to transform how all companies are run… Nothing could be more valuable!” —Mark Drewell, CEO, Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI)

From two of the world’s most successful business leaders comes Common-Sense Business—an accessible, actionable guide to better leadership, increased profits, and a more sustainable economic model predicated on prudence and socially conscious business.

Common sense and prudence have long been among the guiding tenets of society, but in today’s economy they have been completely abandoned in the interest of blindly maximizing profits. Common-Sense Business shows that this current economic model is both detrimental and unsustainable, and that we must transform the global economy along the lines of common sense toward the common good. Ted Malloch, a thought leader and policy influencer in global economic strategy, and Whitney MacMillan, the former chairman and CEO of the world’s largest private corporation, draw on recent research, history’s greatest minds, and their own successes to explain that ethically driven business is both a moral and financial necessity.

Inspired by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, this work explains to readers in all walks of life that ethically driven business will lead to better long-term profits, larger customer bases and more positive customer relations, and a holistically improved business. This book is a must-read for business owners, entrepreneurs, students, and businessmen and women in all sectors of the economy.

$33.99

ISBN-10: 9781510729810
ISBN-13: 978-1510729810

MY LIFE BEHIND THE ELITE CURTAIN AS A GLOBAL SHERPA
THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH

“Ted Malloch—bon vivant, scholar, diplomat, businessman, sportsman… brings us along on some of his greatest adventures.” — LINDA BRIDGES, Editor-at-Large, National Review

Quintessential WASP and Philadelphia native Theodore Roosevelt Malloch has led a life of moral courage in an increasingly secular world. Having attended Gordon College outside Boston and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and having earned a PhD in political economy at the University of Toronto in just three years—where he studied with renowned political philosophers and noted economists and gained a deep understanding of the importance of God and moral values—Malloch always surmised that he would have a global influence—whether in government or business or, as it turned out, both.

Deemed a “global Sherpa” by the former British Prime Minister, the esteemed Lady Margaret Thatcher, and described by noted international business luminaries as the intellectual heir to management guru Peter Drucker, Malloch became a professor at Yale, where he continued to advance the tradition of values-based business management.

His well-rounded faithful upbringing, conservative-classical education, and strong Christian faith kept him grounded amid the corruption and politics that plague much of academia and business life. Then as a senior international economist at the State Department and US Senate, Malloch butted heads with a Congress whose objective was winning elections and grabbing power rather than doing the right thing. While working on Wall Street, he learned that power corrupts and money even more so; and while hobnobbing with global business magnates at Davos and the Aspen Institute, he was saddened by the superficiality and priority placed upon more hedonistic pursuits.

However, as a Christian, an economist, and an ethicist in positions of standing and authority, he is privileged to have had a tremendous positive intellectual and personal influence on many political and business leaders throughout the world. Davos, Aspen, and Yale is an uncommon memoir, a humorous and witty take on Malloch’s life experiences and the lessons he’s learned. Now at the peak of his career, Malloch sits on the board of many prominent multinational corporations and charitable foundations while continuing to advise his colleagues and government leaders on strategy and the economics of what he has dubbed “virtuous capitalism.” In Davos, Aspen and Yale, Malloch demonstrates how the foundation of every economic system must ultimately be built on a foundation of spiritual capital.

AN UNCOMMON WASPY TALE

Earning a PhD in three years, teaching at Yale, working at the State Department at twenty-eight and the UN at thirty-five, and running global economic forums, Theodore Roosevelt Malloch has had an amazing life. But what is more amazing than his accomplishments and positions of influence, is the fact that he has done so while remaining faithful to his Christian roots and having a positive impact on those around him. Full of humorous and entertaining stories that illustrate the virtues that drive his life—as well as stories of those who have abandoned those virtues—Malloch is not afraid to name names as he shares about

• Being a part of a secretive group of “believers” at the State Department

• Working on Wall Street, where people spend more in a day than most people make in a year

• His son, rowing for Yale, taking part in an unpredictable victory in the prestigious Henley Royal Regatta

• Being knighted into the Order of St. John by the queen of England

• Cashing out just in time during the dot-com bubble to walk away with millions, only to lose it in the next round.

• Giving a private seminar to Shoichiro Toyoda, chairman of Toyota and the Japan Business Federation.

• Hobnobbing and strategizing with international celebrities and industry tycoons during his time at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

• Becoming a best-selling author of Doing Virtuous Business, which was made into a PBS documentary watched by fifteen million viewers

$26.95
$26.95 BUSINESS MEMOIR

ISBN 978-1-944229-04-7

Written by By THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH published in “The spectator“

In 2005, Sir John Templeton, who died last year at 95, foresaw the economic and financial disaster we are now living through.

As “annus horribilis” 2008 recedes into the background it might be timely to look back a few years and ask: Who really saw all of this coming? Was such an economic and financial disaster foreseeable? What kind of financial sage would have predicted it three or four years ago, in the middle of the “go-go” years? Well, it turns out there was such a prescient, counterintuitive person, keen of mind and generous of soul. That person himself passed away at age 95 in mid-2008. He was, Sir John Templeton, stock picker of the century, innovator, renowned philanthropist, and always a step or more ahead of the pack…far ahead.

I had the benefit of knowing Sir John and visiting him often where he lived, at Lyford Cay, the Bahamas. I also served on his board of advisors of the John Templeton Foundation. So more recently, in the throes of deepening recession, massive foreclosures, government bailouts, a global stock sell-off, indeed, near financial collapse and all around general — doom and gloom, I found myself repeatedly wondering out loud the same question: “What Would Sir John Say?” Then I remembered. I happened upon this urgent and wise “Memo” from him, written in June 2005. If only we had all taken it to heart and acted upon it then, how much better off we would be now. Read on:

He was, you have to admit, amazingly spot on. But what would Sir John say today in the midst of the greatest recession since the thirties, a global credit crunch of unparalleled proportions and unprecedented market turmoil?

I was with him less than two years ago at the famous Morgan Stanley equity conference at Lyford Cay and he was weak and frail from plain old age. He attended as much as he could because his mind was still sharp, even if his body was in decline. In the final session all the giants of financial services, the hedgies, asset managers, and top fund gurus told a bit about their plans for the future year or so. When Sir John spoke the room fell deafeningly silent, like in those old EF Hutton commercials, you could actually hear a pin drop. When he said he would “short” the financials, autos, airlines, housing, the QQQ, and Wal-Mart it was like a bomb had gone off and people (in this case the largest hedge funds and asset managers in the world) gasped for air. You see, Sir John was not known to normally — go short. One person who runs the world’s largest private equity fund asked sheepishly, “Is there nothing you would buy?” Sir John’s quiet but sure answer I will always remember. He said, “No, because nothing is cheap yet, but they will be shortly.”

Over his long lifetime Sir John while constantly urging for free markets, competition, spiritual knowledge and moral character would also be searching the world over and buying cheap stocks, and then holding them to sell when they had fully appreciated. He would see this moment, this next year, 2009, I think, as the buying opportunity of a lifetime, not only in the U.S. but also, as was his predilection, in markets around the world. Mark his words and check back in five, ten, or twenty years. And when in doubt always ask, “What Would Sir John Say?”

Written by By THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH published in “The Weekly Standard“

How to Revive Capitalism and Put America Back on Top
by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green
Crown Business, 384 pp., $27

Three weeks ago, high in the wintry alpine resort of Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, the world’s elite convened under the auspices of the World Economic Forum. Everyone sipped schnapps and talked about the future of the globe under the banner, “Rethink, redesign, rebuild.” And the book they all were reading was this one, written by an editor of the Economist and his researcher.

The operative word in the title is “from,” and the twin goals of this overly ambitious work are to “revive capitalism and put America back on top”—large goals indeed. According to Bishop/Green, capitalism ended on September 15, 2008, when Lehman Brothers fell. It is now a question of what will replace it. Showing off their blame-game proficiency, Bishop/Green enlist Time’s list of 25 people they love to hate, with Richard Fuld, Lehman’s last CEO, rated number one. The thesis here is that we can learn from the booms, crashes, and bubbles of the past; there were four big mistakes; Henry Paulson is a rogue; the problems are bankers, speculators, regulators, and politicians.

This book is cynical and trite, and the best thing to be said for it is that Bishop/Green do not believe the answer is more Marx. But they come close when they claim that the financial system is a “giant Ponzi scheme.” There are the five lessons of history and the four road signs ahead that, yes, will lead us to “a better kind of capitalism.” Davos phrases abound: Rethink economics, redesign governance, put values back in business, promote financial literacy. Full of suggestions, most of them half-baked, Bishop/Green suggest that the most pressing challenge is for the dollar to “relinquish its role as the world’s reserve currency.” Greed, we are told, is not good. And since easy populism would be a mistake, Bishop/Green show us the three roads ahead: Denial—where we do nothing; government control; and their preferred route, from ruin to new prosperity.

Here is a sample insight: “At times of panic credit markets have a tendency to freeze.” Here is another: “The bubble forms when expectations exceed reality.” Cue the applause from the civics class. Pondering the Goldman Sachs scandal, Bishop/Green defend the too-big-to-fail argument: Their hope is that we can “find ways to deter financial institutions from taking on excessive risks.” Excessive risks, sure; but all risks? They applaud the public rescue of banking and government-inspired guarantees (bailouts), and their mantras are “print more money” and, when in doubt, “strengthen regulatory measures.” We also need much more “coordination” to defeat systemic risk. Did Keynes really get it right? Is Big Government good government? Do markets always fail when left to their own devices?

Taking on the dismal science of economics, Bishop/Green plead for a “new paradigm.” The “animal spirits” of the market are not good and must be tamed. Citing Alan Greenspan’s mistakes (“he should have known better”), they rely on the authority of George Soros. Stakeholder capitalism enters left stage; behavioral economics is less arrogant. With improved statistics, and Nicolas Sarkozy’s new Commission on Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, we can modernize accounting and have a perfect global solution—a super-International Monetary Fund. Besides dumping the dollar, the world must also have “international consensus” since the United States had been naughty and “learning to share power and give up control can be difficult.”

In the new Bishop/Green economy, an all-powerful Global Central Bank will run money, ignoring notions of national interest; but like gun ownership, the spread of capital will also need to be controlled. Aid is critical, since poverty remains in the world—but only “aid that works.” Foreign aid doesn’t work, it is here acknowledged, but we need more anyway. The problem is a lack of “collective action.” The authors’ notion of “philanthrocapitalism,” based on shareholder democracy and the overthrow of boards (especially the bad ones), will end cronyism, overcompensation of hungry CEOs, and lousy governance. And it will finally give us corporate social responsibility—Bill Gates’s version of “creative capitalism”—where we all “give back” and invest entirely on a social basis. To hell with profit. All we need is the political will, since “ultimately the public is to blame.” Why? Because it is financially illiterate. Journalists should be reeducated and made more “skeptical.”

For in the end, money is the great taboo; it’s what leads to subprime lending. Realizing that money is the “root of all evil,” a “competent economic citizenry” will fight the inherent flaws of capitalism because “the people were angry and scared.” If we don’t fight capitalism, we are warned, we could end up with a Chinese-style authoritarian capitalism. We can’t do “business as usual” any longer, and most certainly America, who started all this money madness, cannot dictate since the United States is no longer a “hegemon.”

It’s interesting to note that, through all the sermonizing and flagellation, short shrift is given to the classical virtues and to thrift. Instead, the underlying credo here is the need for more confidence in global government, since finance is an imperfect tool for managing risk in an uncertain world. But the market is up since September 2008; TARP funds are nearly repaid; financial reforms are on the way, and so are the Wall Street bonuses, as large as ever. Maybe we’re not on the road to ruin? Maybe we will adapt and muddle through?

Capaldi, Nicholas N. and Malloch, Theodore Roosevelt

This book tells a story, a story about America’s spiritual capital. Spiritual capital is the fund of beliefs, examples, and commitments that are transmitted from generation to generation through a religious tradition, and which attach people to the transcendent source of fulfillment and happiness. America has created the greatest civilization the world has ever known, and it has done this because of its spiritual capital, the values and beliefs by which individual Americans have interpreted and transformed the world. The Judeo-Christian heritage has historically served as the spiritual capital of America. It is not only the spiritual quest of modernity, but that quest has evolved into globalization, and America, because of its spiritual capital, has been able to provide leadership for that quest. The larger thesis is that America is by virtue of its specific spiritual capital heritage not only the beneficiary of its advantages but also the leading exemplar of the spiritual quest of modernity. It is because is engaged in a spiritual quest that it can exercise world leadership as opposed to domination and oppression.

The authors examine the extent to which economic development, growth, and entrepreneurship depend on spiritual capital. They argue that there is a symbiotic relation between America’s spiritual capital and our political institutions and freedoms. The argument here is that the substantive spiritual vision supports the political and economic procedural norms of a free society.

Like any form of capital, spiritual capital may lie dormant or be wasted, it may be used productively, it may be augmented, and it may be diminished or eroded. In the final chapter, we point out how the heritage is under assault from a variety of sources and what happens when scientific, technological, economic, and political institutions are detached from their spiritual roots. The result is a natural progression from governmental bureaucratic centralization to secularism to reductive materialism and ultimately to a social-collectivist conception of human welfare. Within the story there is an argument, namely, that these achievements will not be sustained without that heritage, and for all of the above reasons the heritage needs to be reaffirmed. The authors argue that the future of modernity, globalization, and America depend on the extent to which there is a reaffirmation of America’s spiritual capital.

“A very graceful statement of important truths.” – Rodney Stark, author of The Victory of Reason

“Weaving the thoughts of two millennia into a flying carpet, Capaldi and Malloch give us a breathless ride through intellectual history and a breathtaking overview of how America’s spiritual capital grew.” – Dr. Marvin Olasky, Editor-in-chief, WORLD and Father of “compassionate conservatism”

“America and its commercial civilization are far more reliant on those religious and spiritual impulses that have shaped the Republic from its very beginning. It’s paradoxical that in an age of apparent secularization, the centrality of what is increasingly called “spiritual capital” to entrepreneurship, rule of law, free exchange, and risk-taking is becoming more evident. In America’s Spiritual Capital, Nicholas Capaldi and Theodore Roosevelt Malloch have done all of us a service by explaining the complex and productive relationship between free societies, economic progress, and human creativity through the medium of spiritual capital. It’s a concept whose time has long been coming and, in Capaldi and Malloch, it has found worthy and wise interpreters and teachers.” – Samuel Gregg, Director of Research, Acton Institute

“While the idea and reality of social capital has become widely recognized, spiritual capital has been largely ignored. Yet it offers, as this book so ably demonstrates, a valuable conceptual and empirical framework for the understanding and renewal of contemporary culture.” – Dr Peter S Heslam, University of Cambridge

“America’s Spiritual Capital provides a defense of free markets and the free society which builds on a sound moral and religious framework. It is neither grounded in a narrow libertarian ideological framework nor the professional jargon of the economist. A refreshing read.” – William F. Campbell, Secretary, The Philadelphia Society

“America’s Spiritual Capital is a unique part of modernity and a force for good. Without it our own religious liberty would suffer and with it our role in the world is made more significant.” – Nina Shae, Director, Center for Religious Freedom, The Hudson Institute

“America’s path forward must be illuminated by knowledge of its history and institutions of government. A free society cannot maintain its liberty without a clear understanding of the spirit that animates and informs its practices of self-government and individual responsibility. Our college and university students and trustees both would benefit from taking this book to heart.” Anne D.Neal, President, American Council of Trustees and Alumni

“America’s history, from the Founders to the present is a spiritual journey in liberty; this timely book lays out how that came to be and why it is so critical for our future freedom.” Christopher L.Talley, President and CEO, Liberty Fund

Nicholas Capaldi is Legendre-Soulé Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics at Loyola University, New Orleans. He also serves as Director of the National Center for Business Ethics. He is the author of seven books, over 80 articles, and editor of six anthologies. He is a member of the editorial board of six journals and has served most recently as editor of Public Affairs Quarterly.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is Chairman and Chief Executive officer of The Roosevelt Group, a leading strategic management and thought leadership company. His most recent books are: Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business, Encounter Books 2008 (over 25,000 copies sold) and Renewing American Culture: The Pursuit of Happiness, 2006, with Scott Massey, which has been made into an Emmy-nominated PBS documentary.

Can the concept of “spiritual capital” actually ensure a company’s success?

Critics of capitalism view big businesses as insatiable masters of the universe with little regard for the public. They label those who create wealth as greedy, malicious, and unscrupulous. Doing Virtuous Business answers these charges head-on. In this insightful and original book, Theodore Roosevelt Malloch presents the bold idea that the creation of wealth by virtuous means is the most important thing that can be done for society…

Doing Virtuous Business explains the true purpose of business and illuminates the connection between a free economy and religious liberty. Drawing from the notion of “social capital,” which has been developed by generations of scholars, Malloch adds the concept of “spiritual capital” as a foundation for social progress and also a necessity for responsible and successful enterprise. He details the virtues that sustain a business and a free market—virtues that build up a network of trust, which is critical to the global economy.

Malloch reveals that a company’s soul determines its “spiritual capital,” an equally imperative foundation to success. From Wal-Mart to IBM, Malloch demonstrates how companies that operate on ethical models informed by spiritual traditions have outperformed their competitors. This book is a welcome moral defense of free enterprise and a sensible guide for achieving the ideal of virtuous business.

Besides making the world a better place, Malloch argues, virtuous enterprise makes companies far more successful and profitable than they otherwise would be. He presents case studies of virtuous business in the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as statistical analysis demonstrating how companies that operate on ethical models have outperformed their competitors over the long run.

Documentary

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, Spiritual Enterprise (New York: Encounter Books, 2008), 163 pp., xxii.

The modern market economy has, with some notable exceptions, from the time of Rousseau and Marx down to the present been largely defined by its ignorant adversaries. They see only the bad and attribute every conceivable evil to it. The defenders of the market economy in the discipline of economics often see only a soulless process in which it no longer makes sense to raise questions about right and wrong. Curiously, the first great and positive account of the modern market economy given by Adam Smith comprehended the larger cultural context within which markets operate. What Theodore Malloch gives us in Spiritual Enterprise is a sustained account of the role of faith in the leadership and operation of a successful business and the necessity of spiritual capital for a healthy market. He writes in the tradition of Max Weber, Michael Novak, Wilhelm Röpke, and Deidre McCloskey.

Expanding Putnam’s concept of social capital, Malloch defines spiritual capital as “the fund of beliefs, examples and commitments that are transmitted from generation to generation through a religious tradition, and which attach people to the transcendent source of human happiness.” (pp. 11-12). Malloch maintains that it is not possible to understand the economic success of the market economy without understanding the religious and moral culture which undergirds it. He would dismiss the claims of Daniel Bell in the “Cultural contradictions of Capitalism” that a market economy undermines its own original moral tradition. He offers in rebuttal a host of detailed examples from prominent business leaders of the important role that a religiously inspired ethics has played in their whole life as well as in their business. Without denying that professed non-believers can lead moral lives and business, he questions whether this can be sustained over generations. He forces us to raise the question of whether we are now living on borrowed and diminishing spiritual capital.

In our overly rational age we suffer from an intellectual hubris which refuses to recognize that there is a pre-conceptual domain (practice) that cannot be conceptualized (theory). There is a mystery at the heart of the universe that moderns refuse to countenance. This hubris has ethical implications. If practice could be conceptualized then the relationship between theory and practice can itself be explained in theoretical terms. If one could give a theoretical account of the relationship between theory and practice, then such an account would dictate what practice should be. At the heart of this hubris is the epistemological claim that once the correct theory is in place then the practical consequences or the ethical implications are entailed. Whatever qualifications are introduced, the adherents of this view believe that rules can be understood to apply themselves. This hubris is reflected in many business ethics courses in business schools, courses which are based on the claim that you can teach someone to be ethical. This hubris has had a devastating effect on ethical practice. It transforms morality into an intellectual exercise, the application of theory to practice or morality as the reflective observance of rules or ideals. Emphasis is put upon having a correct and defensible theory rather than on how to act. The ideals too quickly turn into obsessions. Inevitably moral sensibility is inhibited or even eroded in favor of an elaborate casuistry. The object seems to be to observe a rule instead of behaving in a certain concrete manner. It achieves the appearance of stability at the price of imperviousness to change. When change can no longer be resisted it occurs as a revolution rather than as an evolution.

What Malloch offers as an antidote are the traditional virtues. The moral life, then, is “not a matter of what you do but of what you are”; the task of the moralist is to “describe the virtues that we should emulate and teach our children” (p. 18). Malloch first focuses on the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. His examples taken from the lives of real business leaders can only be described as inspiring. The specific virtues germane to business practice, what he calls the hard virtues, are leadership, courage, patience, perseverance, and discipline. Rather than bracketing off the hard virtues, Malloch then connects them to the soft and social virtues of justice, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and humility. This is not a laundry list or historical curiosity; rather it is a coherent and integrated account of how some religious traditions give transcendent meaning to the creation of wealth, how that wealth is not an end in itself but becomes the resources for human accomplishment, and how that achievement translates into socially responsible action.

Lawrence Kudlow urges that Malloch’s book should be read by every CEO. I could not agree more. Perhaps more than any other figure, the entrepreneur is the embodiment of the classical virtues. He is his own boss. His successes and failures are his own. He eats what he kills. He gains or loses in proportion to his ability to serve the wants and needs of those who trade with him voluntarily. In the free, capitalist economy, the entrepreneur is the motive force. The practical significance of entrepreneurship is abundantly evident. Every place of business, from the humblest storefront to the gleaming corporate campus, is testament to the existence of an entrepreneur and his vision. Despite his significance in practice, however, the entrepreneur is diminished or dismissed entirely in theory. Acknowledgement of the entrepreneur’s contribution to our civilization lags significantly among those whom Robert Nozick termed wordsmith intellectuals. We are awash in academic, journalistic, and cultural cues that deny or ignore the value of entrepreneurial activity

For roughly the middle five decades of the 20th century, the entrepreneur largely disappeared from mainstream intellectual inquiry in the discipline that should be most sensitive to the effects of his activity: economics. In the regnant neoclassical paradigm, his activities are assumed out of existence in the model of the perfectly competitive market that serves as a touchstone for much of the field’s thought. But the marginalization of the entrepreneur is most notable not in the realm of theoretical economics, but rather in that portion of the academy ostensibly devoted to practical instruction in the ways of commerce—the modern business school. Since at least the early 1960s, academic business education has viewed the entrepreneur mainly as the anachronistic forerunner to the technocratic, scientifically-trained, corporate manager. Where entrepreneurship does appear in the business curriculum, it is at the margin. Courses devoted to entrepreneurship are almost invariably elective and virtually never part of the core curriculum. It is as if entrepreneurship were a deviant form of business practice, alien to the typical, mainstream business-doing to which the core curriculum is putatively devoted. Further from the academy, public intellectuals of the middle 20th century, like John Kenneth Galbraith, filled their books and columns with tales of the entrepreneur’s virtual extinction and irrelevance in a coming economy dominated by large, state-like corporate behemoths. In popular culture, the entrepreneur suffers much the same fate as the corporate entities that are supposed to displace him. With rare exceptions, literature and film find the entrepreneur interesting (if at all) only in his capacity for predation.

What is the future of spiritual capital in America? Is American spiritual capital being eroded? We believe there is a natural progression from governmental bureaucratic centralization to secularism to materialism to a social-collectivist conception of human welfare. We assert that the welfare state undermines institutions (e.g., family and religion) that promote spiritual capital; militant secularism as a quasi-religion promotes a reductive conception of human nature, one that denies freedom and responsibility. We already see the results full blown in the impoverishment and implosion of the Communist empire and we are seeing the gradual evisceration of spiritual capital in Western Europe. It is time to retrieve, restate, and revitalize America’s spiritual capital. Malloch’s book is the best place to start this renewal. For not since Adam Smith himself have we witnessed so forceful a treatment on the linkage between the economy and moral reasoning.

Nicholas Capaldi
Legendre-Soulé Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics &
Director of the National Center for Business Ethics
College of Business Administration
Loyola University New Orleans
6363 St. Charles Avenue
Campus Box 15
New Orleans, LA 70118
(225) 772-6523
nick.capaldi@gmail.com
capaldi@loyno.edu
www.cba.loyno.edu/faculty/Capaldi

The rapid changes affecting America and the world have been led by economic and technological forces. The cultural dimensions of this change have been largely ignored in the process. Without a significant advance and innovation in the realm of culture and value, the great economic and technological gains of the recent past are exposed to great risk. A new, life-affirming framework that reconnects economics, culture, science, art, and leadership is critically needed to mitigate this risk.

Download a Book Study Guide

Read an Excerpt From Google Books

PBS Documentary

Read Reviews

Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO, Forbes, Inc. and Editor-in- Chief, Forbes magazine

Rockefeller himself believed that thrift was essential to well-ordered living. This book, if followed, could help all of us put our personal and public lives back in order.

Jim Stanley, Co-Chairman, VII, Inc.

According to the ever-wise Dr. Samuel Johnson, “Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.“ This book is most noteworthy because it puts us back on such a virtuous path!

Mary Jeffries, CEO, Polaroid

Edison like all inventors knew that the scope of Thrift is limitless. So did Dr. Land the founder of Polaroid, one of our companies. Ted Malloch has done all of us in business a huge favor- -he has rediscovered a virtue that unlocks the door to success and builds true character.

Dr. Stanley Carlson-Theis, Senior Policy Director, Center for Public Justice

This is a most interesting and timely topic—not exactly politically correct nor the kind of thing that captains of industry or politicians thinking of tax revenues (i.e., all politicians) want us to reflect on and pay heed too! But, thrift is a virtue that is relevant also to non tartan-skirted folks. . .

Colin A. Hanna, Executive Director, Let Freedom Ring

For most of us, thrift is the necessary precondition to generosity. In this book, Dr. Malloch points out the public as well as private benefits of the twin virtues of thrift and generosity. Both societies and individuals yearn to influence history, and this engaging book illustrates the simple truth that we must be good stewards, not merely consumers, of the gifts entrusted to us if we hope to make a positive impact on those around us.

Milt Kuyers, CEO, Faustel, Inc.

Wow…, has Ted Malloch packed a lot into this book on a much broader perspective than you could have ever guessed from it’s title. It supports traditional thought while showing excellent research and examples. It proves the thesis that thrift results in many kinds of wealth. I had to read and study it a second time to appreciate the depth of thinking here exhibited!

Dr. Paul Zak, Professor of Economics and Director, Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, Claremont Graduate University and Editor of, Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy

Dr. Theodore Malloch’s book on thrift reminds us of the importance of this overlooked virtue by tracing its value, both historic and contemporary. Tracing its roots from the Scottish enlightenment to the no-waste credo of Sam Walton, Malloch shows how thrift advantages others rather than ourselves, a noble act that can make us happier. Equally important, thrift provides the resources to stimulate prosperity: without savings there is no investment. Indeed, Malloch argues persuasively that underdevelopment is a moral dilemma because corruption and ineptitude have crowded out thrift. This important book is lively, topical, and immediately useful.

Paul Corts, President, CCCU

In an earlier era, America’s Calvinist president, Calvin Coolidge, argued that industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character. Malloch’s treatment of thrift needs to be read aloud in classrooms so that once again our people will find and build character.

Al Sikes, Chairman, Trinity Forum

Thrift takes on “the crucial linkage between democracy, freedom and capital”. Ted Malloch asks the tough questions and goes deep to find the truths, which animate our lives. His thoughts and conclusions on “spiritual capital” are especially persuasive.

Paul Dietrich, CEO, Foxhall Capital

Thrift is not avarice. Avarice is not generous. Historically, it is the thrifty people who are generous. If we want a society of true wealth, a giving society, we will need to rediscover the virtue of thrift so well expounded in this book that should become a true classic.

Michael Van Pelt, President, Work Research Foundation

Malloch’s injection of the virtue of thrift in today’s public dialogue will challenge us to renovate our economic house, repair our appetites and help us search for what is of real value. Somehow, this forgotten virtue has me humbled at its simplicity and enthusiastic about the power of an historic idea poised to live again. This is the wise work of one of our true public intellectuals.

Bev Hendry, President, Aberdeen Asset Management

As an Aberdonian, from the north of Scotland, I can certainly appreciate the virtue of thrift more than most. Thrift as well as other traditional Scottish virtues such as enterprise, hard work and innovation has helped the Scots build up many successful global businesses particularly in the financial arena. This book shows wonderfully how that was possible.

Dr. Paul Marshall, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute

The word thrift seems decidedly unmodern, a fusty old term redolent of Victorian or even Puritan strictness, or perhaps hypocrisy. As this book shows, it is anything but: it is intimately tied to developments such as the economic rise of China and the other Asian tigers, and to many of the ills that plague modern America. Ted Malloch’s marvelous book roots an understanding of thrift in philosophy, economics and theology and shows how this virtue is vital to the renewal of our lives and societies.

Very Rev. Dr. Christopher Hancock, King’s College, London University

‘Where materialism thrives thrift hides’ – not so, of course: they need one another. Spending and saving, like virtue and wisdom, are matters of the soul as much as the ledger. This book by the ever erudite Dr. Malloch provides a timely reminder from someone who knows a lot about both money and virtue, that there is more to life and money than credit or cash.

Joseph Shattan, author of Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War

If America is to prevail in today’s global economy, we will need to cultivate the virtues Ted Malloch describes in this brilliant and extremely readable book. It is wisdom on steroids.

Dwight Lee, Ramsay Professor of Economics and Private Enterprise, Terry School of Business, University of Georgia

Whether a forgotten virtue or not, Malloch makes compelling argument that thrift is a virtue that is very much its own reward. And the reward is not only, or most importantly, in the form of material wealth. Thrift is part of a package of virtues, such as discipline, accountability and farsightedness, that are necessary to a satisfying and meaningful life, and in most cases sufficient as well.

Dr Peter S Heslam, Transforming Business, University of Cambridge.

Thrift is often negatively associated with miserliness. Rooted in the verb ‘to thrive’, however, it is actually about human flourishing. Thrifty people are future-minded, prepared to delay gratification in the hope of a better tomorrow. A wealth of new research affirms the importance of this characteristic for human happiness. Against a background of over consumption based on debt-based instant gratification, Ted Malloch’s book provides a compelling case for the recovery of thrift as a practical virtue relevant to every social sphere. The author’s vast experience of many of these areas ensures that this book is not only timely but firmly based in contemporary reality.

Andrea Sachs, Time Magazine, Dec. 14, 2009

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, whose book Thrift: Rebirth of a Forgotten Virtue may be tough sledding for the non-Ph.D. reader. Malloch, who has held positions at the U.N., the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the State Department, writes with passion in an ambitiously academic style. He examines the history of the concept of thrift- -the root of the word is an Old Norse verb meaning “to thrive”- -citing the contributions of the Scots and Calvinists.

“Malloch’s injection of the virtue of thrift in today’s public dialogue will challenge us to renovate our economic house, repair our appetites and help us search for what is of real value. Somehow, this forgotten virtue has me humbled at its simplicity and enthusiastic about the power of an historic idea poised to live again. This is the wise work of one of our true public intellectuals.”
— MICHAEL VAN PELT,President, Cardus/Work Research Foundation

Despite the calls for massive spending and “stimulus,” if the current financial crisis has taught us anything it is that it is imperative to save, not just spend bailouts. In fact, over the years thrift has become America’s lost or forgotten virtue, rarely mentioned and never celebrated, despite its true historical significance. In Thrift, Theodore Roosevelt Malloch looks at the history of thrift from its roots in the Scottish enlightenment to the no-waste credo of Sam Walton. Thrift, Malloch argues, provides the resources to ultimately stimulate prosperity. Even if the government manages to shock our economy back to life, Americans will require discipline, accountability and farsightedness — all natural products of thrift — to right its course for generations to come. In an age when corruption and ineptitude have crowded out thrift, Malloch’s important book is lively, topical, and immediately useful.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is chairman and CEO of the Global Fiduciary Governance LLC. He headed consulting at Wharton-Chase Econometrics and has worked in capital markets at Salomon Brothers. Dr. Malloch has held positions at the United Nations and has served in senior policy positions in the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and in the U.S. Department of State. He is a research professor at Yale University and at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont.

Photo Credits:
Author Photo by Julie Right, Abbey of London
Cover Art © Mike Kemp/ Rubberball Productions/ Getty Images
Cover Design by Tamaye Perry

Encounter Books
900 Broadway, Suite 601
New York, New York 10003-1239
www.encounterbooks.com

Read Reviews

A common element of the Western intellectual landscape for the last century or so has been the widespread, even pervasive, negative and highly pejorative characterization of business as it is conducted on the model of free enterprise capitalism—namely, that the enterprise of business is inherently rapacious, predatory and selfish (call this “the negative business narrative”). This view is often tied to anti-globalization, anti-Americanism, and anti-religious sentiments and outright attacks on capitalism and “the market”.

To be sure, there has been a bountiful supply of robber barons and rascals to fuel this characterization, (Ponzi schemes, Geeko’s greed, Barbarians at the gate, and accounting errors or were they fabrications) and we can stipulate that sufficient numbers of rapacious businesspersons will always exist to allow the characterization to live on, in the headlines, at least. I only need mention the names Enron, WorldCom, Tyco – you get the point. If we add in the now too familiar faces from the global economic debacle, indeed financial meltdown of the past two years, the list is considerably longer.

But is the dominant negative business narrative truly accurate? Is there not a remarkable disconnect between it and the innumerable largely positive and mutually beneficial experiences that we all have every day and every week in most countries with a great variety of businesses, large, medium and small? Most of us know that most businesses generally provide good-quality goods and services for which we are quite willing to pay what we end up paying. In most cases most of us also work for or with these same firms. And we also know that most businesses will go to considerable lengths, and beyond, to retain us as happy, returning, even so-called, ‘loyal’ customers.

So which is it? Is free-enterprise capitalism inherently (i.e., essentially) selfish, predatory and rapacious, or not? For those who still believe in logic, this question presents a clear decision mechanism. If business on the free-enterprise capitalist model is inherently rapacious, predatory and selfish, then any businesses built on contrary models (models of service, good will, community responsibility, etc.) must be severely disadvantaged in their competition to survive. This would be the test: Is it possible for a significant number of successful businesses to be organized on models that are contrary to the negative business narrative, the one that dominates the headlines of the media in order to sell papers and make news? If so, then the negative business narrative is itself false. Selfishness and rapaciousness are not inherent in free enterprise capitalism, and we can confidently and fruitfully teach and practice to a richer, better, even spiritually inspired model.

In light of this challenge, it is highly encouraging to encounter the evidence I laid out in my recent book, Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business. What a strange title people say. ‘Spirituality and business’ in the same sentence. Is it not a mistake? An oxymoron? Is it even relevant in our agnostic age? This slim book is aimed at a general audience, but do not be misled. Many corner-office executives have certainly profitably read it, and more should, but it may also likely provoke its share of scholarly studies. Achieving either one of these objectives is rare enough, but I hope this book will actually do both because we must work at (1) demonstrating that virtuous leadership leads to business success; and also, (2) help everyone see how to recover the vision of free enterprise capitalism as wholly consistent with spiritual depth and moral commitment. There is plenty here for both the business practitioner and the business-management theorist/political economist. I was thankful to have Larry Kudlow from CNBC the leading business television show and a convert to Catholicism say, “Every CEO should read this book and regain the moral energy to lead both their firms and the global economy.” No less than the leading professor of business ethics (at a major Catholic University, I should add) added, “ Not since Adam Smith himself have we witnessed so forceful a treatment on the linkage between the economy and moral reasoning as we find in Spiritual Enterprise”.

I was motivated to write this book to counter the negative business narrative, while encouraging those in business to develop their spiritual understanding of their ‘calling’ (an important religious concept now nearly entirely lost) and practice as businesspersons. I believe that defenders of capitalism have tended to miss this all important spiritual dimension. So I try to display the spiritual dimension powerfully by introducing the classical concept of virtue (a virtue is a habit of excellence that makes one a better person for possessing that habit). I introduce the virtues (including faith, hope, charity, courage, perseverance, discipline, compassion, humility, and more), and then copiously illustrate each one with extended stories and biographical vignettes of successful leaders of businesses and enterprises whose leadership has strongly exhibited the virtue in question. Hopefully, I successfully make the case that virtuous leadership creates a strong, focused organization, one that is not only financially successful, but also ethical and good. Many readers have written to me, ardent advocates of virtue ethics from within the discipline of philosophy, as well as heads of great and good companies, finding this application of the virtues to leadership and business management a significant and positive development. I conclude the book with a concise spreadsheet showing that operating major businesses in conspicuously virtuous ways is entirely compatible with flourishing enterprises, and in many cases, with businesses that either dominate their competitors, out-perform the S&P 500 Index (by 20%), or both. This readable book has it all—ideas, practical guidance, and compelling numbers.

In showcasing the virtues at the heart of leadership practice, I am certainly doing something new and fresh, providing a strong basis in personal character for the success of spiritually attuned businesses. But even so, this approach is only a natural development from the values-oriented approach to leadership that is, at this point, well entrenched in leadership thinking and in the best business schools, as seen in such standard texts as Kouzes and Posner’s The Leadership Challenge. Of Kouzes and Posner’s list of 20 most-admired characteristics in leaders, fully half are bona fide virtues, and more generally, most good values are either virtues themselves (such as honesty) or close cousins to virtues (as in commitment, which upon analysis often seems to be a composite of the virtues of perseverance, discipline, and loyalty). My approach is also highly amenable to, and foundational to, other well established understandings of business and leadership. These include those deriving from specific religious traditions, classically exemplified by Michael Novak’s gem, Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life, the servant-leadership movement initiated by the work of Robert K. Greenleaf, and Max De Pree’s leadership work that straddles both of the above.

This fresh focus on virtue is foundational to all other approaches to enterprise leadership, including all of these excellent books I just mentioned, because it shows leaders how to develop the personal character to ably lead their institutions in reaching those destinations. Two distinguishing marks of virtue-oriented thinking are (1) the recognition that the best plans, ideas, or rules are worth little unless one possesses the personal character necessary to see them through, and, (2) personal character ultimately consists of habits of life, habits of the soul, which equip one to conduct a morally successful life, a life worthy of the richest notion of honor. This terribly important distinction is reflected in the basic organization of my book. Other management and leadership books are organized around themes of business management and leadership—that is, themes of how the manager or leader should function, the kinds of emphases he/she should have, the kinds of actions he/she should take, etc. In contrast, I organized this book around various virtues—habits of life that make for success, showing how successful leaders have built enterprises upon them. Often, I have found the issue with an enterprise leader is not what should be done, but rather on how to become the kind of person who can do what should be done. In addressing the virtues, it is I believe necessary to go to the foundations. What kind of person should one be as one leads this enterprise? What kind of enterprise shall this be? Here, the turn to virtues is essential.

Spiritual enterprise begins boldly at the most important point, one that could be considered highly controversial within the world of business. I forthrightly affirm from the ‘get-go’ that we are spiritual beings, and that this dimension does (or ought to) color all that we do, including our business. I refer to this principal dimension of our lives by coining the exciting concept of ‘spiritual capital’, which I explain as being analogous to the concepts of social capital and human capital. Social capital is “the accumulated social resources inherited by each new generation from its predecessor”, including “customs, language, manners and morals—in short, all the practices that are taught to us by our parents in order to make us fit members of society” (5). Human capital, consists of the “skills, experience and knowledge, embodied in human beings,” that play an “indispensable part in the generation of profit”.

Analogous to these, I briefly define spiritual capital as “the fund of beliefs, examples and commitments that are transmitted from generation to generation through a religious tradition, and which attach people to the transcendental source of human happiness”. Amplifying this, I think:

We are moral beings, in all the ways that Adam Smith describes. But we are also spiritual beings. We seek out the transcendental source of our values. We join with others in acts of worship and prayer. Through spiritual discipline, habit and exercise, we absorb the legacy of spiritual knowledge that is contained in a religious tradition.

While social capital derives from social interactions, I note a different source for spiritual capital:

It comes from another relation altogether than the relations in human society: the relation with God. The reaching out towards God through worship, prayer, devotion and pious observance are a specific kind of discipline, which is not the discipline of human society. It involves an act of metaphysical submission, a bowing down of the whole spirit to a power that lies beyond the work of our perception. (119)

What I am attempting to do then is to begin to show how spiritual capital connects with our conduct in our professional environments, and this shows how serious many are about putting one’s business on a spiritual basis, as has been modeled by among others, Truett Cathy with Chick-fil-A, Max De Pree with Herman Miller, and many (well thousands to be honest) more:

This posture of spiritual reception, whereby the individual opens his heart to an otherworldly form of obedience, is the core of piety, and it provides unique forms of practical knowledge—for example, the knowledge of what to do and how to behave in circumstances where the existing writ of social mores does not run. The knowledge of how to forgive someone who has tried to destroy you, the knowledge of how to ask forgiveness for your own recognized faults. It also begins with thankful praise and leads to humility and gratitude. As Max De Pree once said, the first and last word of leadership is thanks. It both sets the direction and motivates.

I build on the leader’s commitment to spiritual capital and virtues and show how it can extend to the enterprise itself. When a leader of character similarly establishes his or her enterprise on a virtuous characteristic, that virtue makes a tangible impact on the entire organization, earning it genuine respect (honor) in the firm and in the community. It becomes the kind of business to which people are drawn. I describe how the virtue of faith plays out in the corporate life of so many companies such as Interstate Battery System of America, a highly successful business:

The top leadership shares a vibrant faith, which it openly and courageously shares. That faith colors decision-making and the way that business is conducted: honestly and in trust, towards the goal of serving God.

Exactly like St. Paul’s fruits of the spirit, the fruits of spiritual capital, are the virtues. I take readers on a tour of thirteen virtues, and for an applied book such as his, I serve as a tour guide—good introductions at all stops, plenty of inspiring stories, but not too long at any one place. These presentations of the virtues are intended to be very clear and winsome; we see why each virtue makes one a better person, and a better leader, for possessing that habit of the soul. And the stories I found and tell! They are innumerable, real, and extremely powerful. Actually, they only seem innumerable—over sixty extended business and enterprise leadership stories in the short book, illustrating the virtues (or their absence). Most of the real life stories concern Christian leaders of every stripe, denomination and tradition, but I believe that most religions (at least the significant religious traditions) possess significant spiritual capital to bequeath to their followers, and accordingly I recount several stories of the virtuous leadership of businesspersons from other religious traditions. In classic virtue-ethics fashion, the stories are the heart of the message, and they certainly deliver the case. They also reveal what I hope is a grasp of the scope and essence of contemporary business and economics.

Necessarily I dwell longest on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, because they are the basis of the spiritually attuned life, and business. And it is inspiring, indeed, I would say to see how many devout Christians have courageously made their faith a key part of their organizations’ values and business systems. Next, I introduce what I call the “hard” virtues, the virtues that we would identify as being more masculine in tone: leadership, courage, patience, perseverance, and discipline, the virtues that, to be blunt, help you get the job done. Last, I take us through the “soft” virtues, the virtues that are more readily identified as being “softer and more feminine,” the virtues of justice, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and humility. I readily acknowledge that we are apt to look at these as “stay-at-home virtues,” which is exactly what the leftist critics of the capitalist system say, that these softer virtues have no place in the system of business under free enterprise capitalism. But the evidence in my research constitutes a substantial refutation of the critics.

In wrapping up this quick look at my treatment of the virtues, it will be good to hear directly on one of the soft virtues, gratitude. Note how, in this passage, I not only analyze the relationship of which the virtue is a part, I clearly detail how this attitude impacts the business environment:

. . . [T]he response to a gift is not resentment but gratitude, by which is meant a “going out” to meet the giver, a reciprocal offer of the self and its fund of goodwill. We are not demeaned by gratitude but raised by it to a condition of equality with the giver. We are saying to the one who bestows a gift on us, ‘I too would give, if I could, and meanwhile I give what I can to you.’ In the context of business, such an attitude, far from displaying weakness, is a source of strength: it fosters an open and honest approach to others—whether allies or competitors—and imbues the day-to-day operation of a business with a lightness and cheerfulness that help to release the potential of the workforce.

In this passage, and in countless others in the book, I try and reveal a powerful blend of practical wisdom and business insight.

There are, of course, some “notes” (to use the theatre term) that others have offered to improve the next edition of the book (already in its third printing and now being translated into French and Chinese), of which I will mention three. First, for all the brilliant research work accomplished on the concept of spiritual capital, some think we still need to work out the relationship of spiritual capital (and, therefore, of religion) with the virtues. This is not just an issue of academic completeness. I am well aware that virtue ethics has flourished in cultural traditions that are relatively impoverished in spiritual terms (for example, the Homeric ancient Greek civilization). Further, as I myself would agree one can be virtuous without being religious, and religious without being particularly virtuous. So how do higher levels of spiritual “tuning” tend to lead to higher levels of virtue? The answer I think is two-part, of which the second at least is implicit in the quotations I already cited. First, when the God whom one worships is truly great and good (as in the God of Judaism and Christianity), the corresponding standards of character to which the believer is called are greater (no one ever accused Zeus of being all-loving and merciful!). Second, the relationship of worshipful submission to a great and good God opens up in the believer the spiritual/psychological/theological space (freedom from worship of one’s own ego) to develop the whole range of subtler virtues (the theological virtues and the “soft” virtues), which are less frequently promoted in the ethical traditions outside of the world of Judeo-Christian thought and religious community.

Second, since at least the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, virtue ethicists have noted a distinction between primary and secondary virtues. The former (honesty, faith, justice, and gratitude, etc.) are virtues which always make one a better person for possessing them, regardless of other dimensions of one’s character, while the latter (courage, loyalty, perseverance, discipline, etc.) make one overall a more excellent person only, if one also possesses primary virtues in good and ample measure. For a negative example of this, consider that a CPA who is disciplined, perseverant, and loyal to his CEO whom he knows to be unscrupulous is overall a more dangerous person to society than if he were undisciplined, lazy, and rather disloyal to his unscrupulous boss. Ultimately, as Plato indirectly showed in The Republic, there is indeed a hierarchy of virtues. A truly excellent person needs to possess (more or less) all of the virtues, but that does not mean that all the virtues are of equal priority.

Third, there are some questions over whether we should consider leadership to be a virtue, which I do. The power of virtue ethics in guiding and improving one’s life lies in focusing on discrete, simple (as in non-complex) habits of the soul which can be become the object of training/formation and growth (perseverance—do not quit; discipline—do not give in to one’s temptations; honesty—do not take what seems to be the easy road by lying, etc.). Leadership may be too complex (and possibly mysterious), including skills and personality traits, to strictly be considered a virtue. There can be honest debate over this. I actually believe it has become a platitude to say that success requires leadership, and in many ways the platitude is destructive since it seems to imply that success depends not on you but on somebody else—‘the leader’ who will step in and ultimately take charge of things. Such a command and control view gets you off the hook and free of responsibility. In speaking of leadership as a virtue what I try to do is not say that it lies outside the person whom it benefits. We are saying that it is a quality contained potentially in all of us, a quality that can be developed, nurtured and realized, so that each of us is able to lead himself and others to his goal. That means the leader is also a good follower. He or she is able to take and give advice, to receive and offer help, to join with others without subduing or alienating them, and thereby to accomplish more than any one can alone. Most companies even LLPs or SMEs by definition involve a number of persons and leadership is in that sense a critical virtue.

What I hope to have argued here and in my text — has indeed shown that business is a spiritual enterprise. Virtue endures and spreads because it is sustained by and through faith. The spiritual capital built up by previous generations can be borrowed and invested by others who do not have the faith to renew it, though at some point it surely must be renewed. This renewal of spiritual capital in the business sphere and its specific enterprises is what faith-guided companies achieve. In the new conditions created by the global economy, the information revolution and the growth of smart technologies, it is more than ever necessary for companies to be guided by their rich spiritual inheritance, as spiritual enterprises. We have been taught a necessary and punishing lesson in this current financial crisis, become a moral crisis of that very fact. For only in so doing will each of us and our enterprises realize an incomparable source of the certainties that we need in order to succeed in the highly competitive and interconnected international commerce that we have come to experience and expect more and more in this still emerging 21st century.
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch
Luncheon Presentation
October 27, 2009
Carnegie Hotel
Johnson City, TN

After years of booming business and unbelievable wealth creation, the economy has slowed. Perhaps we are even in a recession? We are stunned by a mortgage crisis that has only reinforced the notion of big businesses as insatiable masters of the universe with little regard for the public. The critics of capitalism have again emerged from every corner to harangue those who create wealth with charges of greed, thievery, and malice. Doubtless the politicians are getting ready to pounce.

Hold on! We need to answer these charges head on with the bold idea that the creation of wealth by virtuous means is the most important thing we can do for ourselves and for others.

The downfalls of WorldCom, Enron, Adelphia, Tyco, and other once high-flying companies like Bear Stearns have flooded newspapers, television screens and courtrooms around the country with important, and often difficult, questions about the ethics of business – or the consequences of their troubling absence. From inventors to investors, venture capitalists to investment bankers, and employees to managers, people inside America’s businesses are all too aware of the need for better corporate governance, for more accountability and transparency.

But from what sources do the virtues that inform such good behavior arise? And why are they so essential to the modern economy we have come to depend on for our creative freedom and our prosperity? Many people have real anxiety about virtue – particularly as it pertains to business – because it is a concept that is increasingly absent from our public vocabulary. Today, the general public holds corporate CEOs in lower esteem than at any time in history, ranking them below lawyers and politicians. Because of the crimes and scandals perpetuated by some company officials, people are rightly disillusioned, even disgusted, by what they glimpse of corporate America’s goals and the nefarious means with which it seeks to achieve them.

Perhaps, profit-only companies are, in fact, parasitic, and they damage the economy at large with their limited and self-focused view of their role in the marketplace. But companies that commit themselves to a more holistic core mission and are steeped in spiritual capital rooted in virtue, succeed not only in righting wrongs but in creating genuine personal and social progress, while also succeeding in generating strong profits. The moral outrage that people feel in response to the past decade of scandal and the past year of deceit is indeed entirely legitimate, and it leads to compelling questions about the true purpose of business and the virtues that are necessary to sustain it and a free economy.

It is characteristic of the age in which we live to see the moral life as a matter of following rules or dictated principles, often enforced by regulations and enforced by faceless bureaucrats. Ancients seldom referred to such rules or principles and there were no bureaucrats. For them the moral life was not a matter of what you do but of what you are. The fundamental notion was not duty but virtue. And the task of the leader was to describe the virtues that we should emulate and teach to our children and peers.

We achieve the condition of happiness and respectability only through the practice and discipline of the virtues. We teach our children to be courageous, wise, just and temperate because we know that this will make them respected by their fellows, secure in their decisions, and able to take full responsibility for their lives. Success in business is similar. Success is not an accident or matter of luck. The crooks usually, in time get caught. We prepare for business success by acquiring virtues—dispositions that help us to take risks, to make decisions, to take responsibilities for our actions, and to accept wise advise and correction. These virtues are the most important part of our human capital. We do not invent them for ourselves. Instead they grow organically over time, through history, tradition and experience. Everyone knows that the best and lasting companies breed virtuous corporate cultures.

The three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) and the hard virtues (leadership, courage, patience, perseverance, and discipline) need to be combined with the soft virtues (forgiveness, gratitude, and humility). Only by returning to the question of ethical norms—things which people must possess before they go to market to compete can we regain our way and have some sense again of a moral compass. These are the indispensable supports, which preserve both the market and competition from degeneration.

Business is the real test of the moral life, and those who engage in it are putting themselves in a position where trust in goodness, whether from God or nature’s laws, is the surest guarantee of success. The immediate result is the shaping of the human character, which in turn transforms culture—national as well as corporate. Vices lose their attraction and virtues become easier as spiritual discipline exerts its hold over the human personality.

Business is all about the creation of wealth and that requires capital investment. I believe the most essential part of that investment is the spiritual capital with which enterprise begins, then flowers and bears fruit – talents creating and sustaining still more talents, and all of us thriving in a vital bond.

It is time to renew our spiritual capital by living the virtues in the business sphere and in specific enterprises. For only in so doing will companies realize an incomparable source of the certainties that they will need in order to succeed in the highly competitive and interconnected international commerce that we have come to experience. In so doing we will be able to sort out the good from the bad and to foster freedom and responsibility.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, is the author of Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business, recently published by Encounter Books, 2008. Hearst Media Syndicate.