Crown Business

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Steep Trajectory

FeatureWed 07 May 2008 by Al Sikes

Illustration by Kelly Crull, CC-BY

Free Lunch Writ Large

We are deep in the blame game over the housing bubble, writes Al Sikes. Mortgage brokers, banks, rating agencies, property flippers, and regulators have all made the list. Perhaps somebody should go upstream in a search for the real culprit. 

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The Bigger Picture

Mon 31 Mar 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Gary Moore

In the current financial climate, perspective is a critical attribute of leadership.

Jump by Wollas, CC-BY, Flickr

During the early nineties, the media, both secular and religious, convinced a large percentage of Americans that our $5 trillion federal debt was of earth-shaking proportions. (They did much the same in the late nineties during Y2K.) As Americans were living on about $25,000 on average in 1990, it is easy to see how that $5 trillion number could look like a giant in the promised land. And most people were quite surprised when I told them the White House had actually estimated that America’s net worth, after subtracting all debts owed to foreigners, was $66.4 trillion in 1990.

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Confessions of a Small Business Fanatic

FeatureMon 24 Mar 2008 • Responses: 2 • by Jo Kadlecek

Florist in Barcelona

'The underdogs around the block'

In this short reflection, Jo Kadlecek looks back on her experience with small businesses as a link to what is human in the capitalist system.

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A Respectful Approach to Leadership Development

A ReviewThu 21 Feb 2008 by Fred Harburg

book cover imageDesigned for Life by Arthur F. Miller. Life (n) Media, LLC, 2007, 328pp., $25.

With the precision of a surgeon and the tenacity of a trial lawyer, befitting his origins, Arthur Miller builds the case for a unifying theory of persons in his provocative book, Designed for Life. This book provides a wake-up call to all who are involved in any human resource job and, more importantly, to leaders who make daily decisions regarding the hiring, placement, and career moves of people. Miller’s reverence for the dignity of each human life and for the Creator of the miraculous panoply of gifts and talents resident in humankind provides a stirring call to arms for leveraging diversity in the most profound sense of the word.

The prevailing wisdom with respect to selection in most organizations is the fundamentally flawed idea that people can be molded and “developed” by an organization to be whatever the organization needs them to be. This position represents extreme organizational hubris, defies practical observation of the nature of human beings, and is enormously disrespectful of the uniquely valuable people who make up an organization’s workforce. 

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Making a Difference

FeatureFri 21 Dec 2007 • Responses: 6 • by Donald M. Bishop

Old sewing machine by Hddod, Flickr

‘Young Altruists’ Need a Broader View of Doing Good

Donald Bishop, a senior U.S. Foreign Service officer, looks at the difficulties faced by some young adults who want to use their careers to make the world a better place. He argues that they leave unexplored real possibilities to do good. It’s time to question the conventional wisdom and consider the possibilities of business, the military, and long-term overseas service as means to help the poor and suffering. 

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In the Interest of Character

Fri 28 Sep 2007 by Gary Moore

frosted rose by Marilylle Soveran

I was as surprised as others by the recent larger-than-expected reduction in short-term interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. Frankly, about the only good I can see in it is that it was an admirable attempt on the part of the new chairman, Ben Bernanke, to bail-out Alan Greenspan’s sinking reputation among even those speculators he’s encouraged during recent years. 

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The World of Total Work

A ReviewThu 06 Sep 2007 by Dan Russ

book cover imageLeisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper, Translated by Gerard Malsbary with an introduction by Roger Scruton (St. Augustine’s Press [1948] 1998), $12.

Work is consuming our lives and—Josef Pieper would say—our humanity. I have recently observed cases of two disturbing instances of what Pieper calls the “world of total work.” The first is among friends and colleagues who are wired for vacations. By this I mean that they either choose or are expected to take their cell phones and laptops with them on vacations. They do so either because they are concerned about what their superiors or colleagues would think if they ignored the demands of the office, or because they fear missing something or someone that might be crucial to their professional lives. Indeed, a friend recently observed that as she and her husband take their annual pilgrimage to the shore, each year the beaches and coffee shops are increasingly filled with people on cell phones and laptops, doing business.

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Linking Liberties

FeatureMon 13 Aug 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch

Stock.xchng

Economics and Religion

Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Malloch explains recent data that show a connection between countries with good religious liberty and high economic liberty—and prosperity. Competition is a factor, but so is “spiritual capital.”

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Believing at Work

FeatureTue 10 Jul 2007 • Responses: 3 • by Stefan G. Lanfer

Towers and Sun, Vancouver

Three Models for Integrating Religious Faith and Business

Analyst Stefan Lanfer looks at the ways people integrate their faith with their work and draws on original research from his recent MBA work to suggest the consequences of different ways of thinking about belief in a professional setting.

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A Reading List on Faith and Business

Reading listMon 09 Jul 2007 by Stefan G. Lanfer

This reading list is from Stefan Lanfer’s bibliography for his 2006 MBA thesis, “Believing at Work,” which is summarized here.

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For the secret of man's being is not only to live . . . but to live for something definite.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Steep Trajectory

McClay at the White House

Johnston on Speaking of Faith

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A Tale of Temptation for Our Times

A Brief Chat with Screwtape

Christ for Culture

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Firm Foundations?

Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Featured Resource

Cover image via AmazonOrthodoxy: The Romance of Faith by G. K. Chesterton.

On its 100th anniversary, this book is just as helpful and provocative as ever.

Gleanings Quick Links

Orthodoxy: Georgetown’s Father Schall reviews G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy on its 100 year anniversary. “In coming to believe in Christianity, Chesterton, as he tells us, did not read a single Christian book in the process. Rather, he read book after book of those who maintained that Christianity could not possibly be true. After he had read many of these tractates, he suddenly realized that the intellectual opponents of Christianity were constantly contradicting themselves about what they were opposing. Chesterton, the most logical of men, figured that anything so odd as to be opposed for the exact opposite reasons must either be quite strange or, in fact, rather normal and true.” A helpful introduction to a lovely book. (James V. Schall, SJ, InsideCatholic.com , 2008 05 05)

Where Were Obama’s Friends?: Friendship under fire: “As for the supersized candidates, what strikes one most about them is their ‘aloneness.’ They look so solitary. Indeed, it is possible that the old and honorable notion of ‘standing with’ a candidate like Obama simply didn’t occur to his famous supporters this week. Everyone has become used to watching celebrity stars and athletes take it in the neck on their own. Even someone running for the nation’s presidency looks like just another personal crack-up.” Makes one pause.  (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal , 2008 05 01)

There’s no way you’re going to convince me: Catholic professor Scott Carson covers the current debates on evil between N T Wright and Bart Ehrman on Beliefnet: “[H]aving had a look at this most recent exchange I have to say that it continues to astound me how simplistic and thoughtless the popular treatment of the problem has become. . . . It’s as if generations of sophisticated and complex theological and philosophical argument amount to nothing when compared to the emotional attitudes of a single individual living in a highly particularized time and place. . . . Just as atheists and agnostics are often—perhaps way too often—tempted to assume that believers only believe for emotional or psychological reasons, so too, it seems rather obvious to me, every non-believer almost certainly has emotional and psychological reasons for not believing that will trump any and every legitimate argument posed against them.” (extensive links from the article to the primary sources) (An Examined Life , 2008 04 27)

The Way We Weren’t: “The fifties really were a time when the culture broadly affirmed Christianity as a Good Thing. I was there. I saw it; I heard it. And yet some kind of demurral is strongly indicated: some sign of recognition that no human society, whatever its good intentions and methods, has lived unburdened, unencumbered by the crushing weight of human fallenness. Good as life may appear to have been in the cities and universities of France and Italy in the thirteenth century, or amid the sweaty fervor of the camp meetings in nineteenth-century America, or among the fierce faith of the emancipators, always human pride and general nuttiness were there to spoil the broth.” (William Murchison, in Touchstone , 2008 04 23)

Not on Sale (2008 04 14)
Seven New Deadly Sins, Suitably Updated (2008 04 10)
The Pope Comes to America (2008 04 09)
Both Read the Same Bible (2008 04 09)
Muslims Outnumber World’s Catholics (2008 03 31)

more . . .