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Items related to the worlds of commerce and markets

Not on Sale: “The free-market ideologues take one instance of spontaneous order, and erect it into a prescription for all the others. They ask us to believe that the free exchange of commodities is the model for all social interaction. But many of our most important forms of life involve withdrawing what we value from the market: sexual morality is an obvious instance, city planning another. (America has failed abysmally in both those respects, of course.) Looked at from the anthropological point of view religion can be seen as an elaborate (and spontaneous) way in which communities remove what is most precious to them (i.e. all that concerns the creation and reproduction of community) from the erosion of the market.” (Roger Scruton, quoted by Rod Dreher )

Mon 14 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

British business leaders are now as spineless as American ones: “Businesses have a moral responsibility to use the power of their investments not only to make money but also to improve matters globally. That is the whole point of their signing up to statements and organisations such as the UN’s Global Compact or participating in exalted events such as the World Economic Forum. If businessmen and businesswomen don’t want to entirely discredit such organisations and institutions, the least they can do is to keep quiet rather than openly show that they are prepared to sacrifice liberty, law, and principle for the sake of profit.” (Prabhu Guptara, Renaissance blog )

Tue 12 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Christ, My Bodhisattva: Multinational businessman and politician Ram Gidoomal talks about ‘translating’ the gospel in today’s world: “Business is a uniquely global endeavor. Just on Sunday, I was preaching at my local church and a guy in the congregation came up to me and said, “I’m a New Zealander, I’m working in a salmon business in Chile, and I’m here [in London] just for today, on my way to Norway to see the business owners.” There’s no other field that so closely matches the global nature of God’s mission.” (Christianity Today )

Fri 27 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Ending Quarterly Earnings Guidance?: Senior Fellow Prabhu Guptara wrote last month about short-term thinking too: “Well, anything less than annual guidance encourages short-termism in a marketplace that is already short-term enough.” (Prabhu Guptara, Renaissance blog )

Tue 17 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Do The Smug Thing: Web 2.0 tracking site TechCrunch notes a new for-profit do-gooder site. “As you would expect, the site is filled with typical rants against Walmart and other easy to target companies. One Scottish company is being attacked because they ship scampi to Thailand to be hand peeled prior to being shipped back to the UK for consumption. . . . On the other end of the spectrum, anyone wearing and selling red stuff is celebrated because they, and apparently they alone, care about people with AIDS.” Even in an age of strict relativism, there's always somebody who wants to tell you what to do. (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch)

Mon 29 Jan 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Toppling a Taboo: Businesses Go ‘Faith-Friendly’: New Senior Fellow David W. Miller and his new book is featured in an article from the Wharton School. “Becoming 'faith-friendly' is 'not a formula; it's a mind-set,' Miller adds. He encourages companies to make faith-friendliness an explicit part of company policy—a move that could heighten a company's appeal to potential employees. To make sense of the faith-at-work movement, Miller breaks it into four motivating factors. . . .” (Knowledge@Wharton)

Mon 29 Jan 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Good Book Business: “There is also concern that Bible publishers, for all their marketing ingenuity, have outsmarted themselves. Tim Jordan said, ‘There’s been research that has shown that half the people who come into a Christian bookstore intending to buy a Bible, with money in their pocket, leave without one, because they get overwhelmed.’” Also: “The problem, as she sees it, is that ‘instead of demanding that the believer, the reader, the seeker step out from the culture and become more Christian, more enclosed within ecclesial definition, we’re saying, “You stay in the culture and we’ll come to you.” And, therefore, how are we going to separate out the culturally transient and trashy from the eternal?’” A good discussion. The ESV blog link has other commentary. Worth pondering. (Daniel Radosh, The New Yorker (via ESV Bible Blog))

Tue 12 Dec 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

How Bhagavad Gita has charmed US corporates: “Some Indian theorists have said their ultimate goal is to promote an entirely different theory of management—one that would replace shareholder capitalism with stakeholder capitalism.” (Rediff India Abroad, from BusinessWeek)

Mon 13 Nov 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Banker and Poet: “John Barr is both a poet and a banker and he says he’s better at both because of it, as reported by Jia Lynn Yang and Jerry Useem in Fortune (10/30/06).” (Here's the Fortune article: “Cross Train Your Brain”) (Reveries magazine courtesy Brewing Culture)

Fri 10 Nov 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments