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Abstract
Despite extensive connections to ethics and philosophy, the literature on stakeholder theory has largely avoided direct linkages to religion and spirituality. At the same time, Catholic Social Teaching and other religious traditions have ignored any meaningful discussion of stakeholder theory. This paper connects the stakeholder literature and religion by presenting a framework that specifies macro-level core Catholic Social Teaching tenets and the normative business obligations derived from this doctrine. These obligations ground Catholic Stakeholder Thinking which represents the attendant meso-level responsibilities of managers and firms, as well as the priority rules for resolving stakeholder conflicts. The resulting articulation of Catholic doctrine to business expands not only the normative depth of stakeholder theory, but also the practicality and relevance of Catholic Social Teaching. Through their interactions with various stakeholders, firms and managers are encouraged to pursue the common good and integral human development in solidarity with the poor within their value chains.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge Andrew Wicks and Robert Kolodinsky for all their help in the preparation and review of this manuscript. In addition, the author thanks Kenneth Goodpaster, Eduardo Jose Calasanz, Patricia Werhane, and the participants of the Society for Business Ethics annual meeting in Boston for their insightful comments and suggestions. This paper is dedicated in the memory of Andrew Silva.
Notes
1. Catholic Social Teaching represents a meaningful religious foundation to understand the purpose of firms, and managerial stakeholder responsibilities.
2. Inspired by Kantian ethics, Phillips (Citation2003) presents an ideal based on reciprocity (Smith Citation2005) that arises when stakeholders “voluntarily accept the contribution of some group or individual” (Phillips Citation2003, p. 26). In addition to the principles of “entry and exit, governance, externalities, contracting costs, agency and limited immortality” (Freeman Citation1994, p. 417), this can be used to evaluate the soundness of other cores.
3. See Hope (Citation2007) for an “alternative representation of the divine through feminist and process theological insights rooted in a post-structuralist framework” (Hope Citation2007, p. 505).
4. Collectively representing a dynamic and evolving body of knowledge centered on the belief that one’s faith should affect all aspects of one’s life (Thompson Citation2010, p. 6) Catholic Social Teaching recognized our specialness like other ethical theories (e.g. Kant Citation1997) and called for improved compensation, working conditions, and increased meaningful interaction between managers and workers, as well as a recognition of the social aspect of private property, the decentralization of initiatives to the smallest relevant groups and individuals, and the centrality of social justice and human rights to the mission of the Church (Pius IX Citation1931, Quadragesimo Anno, Paul VI Citation1967, Populorum Progessio).
5. The general lack of a meaningful discussion on stakeholder theory by current spirituality and religion research is gleaned in the following. Steingard (Citation2005) created a spiritually informed management theory that drew from numerous organized religious traditions but has not explored its links with stakeholder theory. Shen and Midgley (Citation2007) integrated Buddhist religious tradition with systems thinking in proposing a Buddhist systems methodology to business problem-solving. Finally, Quddus et al. (Citation2009) explored the relationship between business ethics and Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
6. Because of the Church’s macro-level focus, it may not have critically analyzed business activity. It was only in Caritas in Veritate and Vocation of the Business Leader that such an analysis revealed both the harms and benefits that businesses generate for society.
7. This deficiency may be partially explained by the hostility of a “Catholic view of the corporation” (Naughton Citation2006, pp. 38–39) to stakeholder theory, making it difficult for scholars to see the merits of connecting stakeholder theory and Catholic Social Teaching. In reality, there is nothing that discounts the possibility of incorporating a Catholic core in stakeholder theory. Freeman regards stakeholder theory as an umbrella of stakeholder theories, each having its own normative cores (Freeman Citation1994, pp. 413–414). If this was accepted, then the dichotomy between the interests the corporation should be operated for and whether or not the corporation is a community of persons (Naughton Citation2006, p. 36) disappears.
8. See Sison and Fontrodona (Citation2011, Citation2012) for an application of Catholic Social Teaching to the common good.
9. These documents will be notated using their initials with full names listed at the end of the paper. Initial citations will be annotated fully while succeeding citations of the same work will be initialized. It is not the intention of this paper to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive account of either Catholic Social Teaching or Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy. Only those parts that directly relate to the topic at hand are discussed. Scholars may formulate other articulations of Catholic Social Teaching within stakeholder theory.
10. Human rationality is defined as the capacity of humans to use reason to enter into contractual arrangements with others that becomes the basis of various rights and responsibilities (Burton and Dunn Citation1996).
11. From the Latin “vocare” which means “call”, the term “vocation” is defined as one’s calling or purpose. This has a very interesting parallel with Word (Citation2012) who refers to engaging work as a calling.
12. In doing so, Catholic Social Teaching also reminds them to be aware of the larger societal trends (VBL, No. 17) which threaten Christian morality so that they can act consistent with the Gospel message while remaining grounded in their situated reality (VBL, 38).
13. Accordingly, “ [j]ust as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do” (QA, No. 79).
14. While these obligations may initially pertain to economies and other macro-level systems, there is nothing in Catholic Social Teaching that limits their application to just this level of analysis.
15. This is because the Church, “in all her being and acting – when she proclaims, when she celebrates, when she performs works of charity – is engaged in promoting integral human development …” (CiV, Ch.1, No. 11).
16. For an excellent discussion on the grounds for which firms must contribute towards the common good please refer to Sison and Fontrodona (Citation2012).
17. The common good is not the highest good or a mere aggregation of individual preferences, such definitions arising from the liberal enlightenment view which rejects the common good altogether. The emphasis of liberal enlightenment on an “individualistic view of the human person” (Sison and Fontrodona Citation2012, p. 218) and a “materialistic conception of goods where rivalrous and exclusionary consumption is the rule” (Sison and Fontrodona Citation2012, p. 219) unnecessarily dichotomizes man into an individual who stands opposed to society when in reality we are both individual and relational in nature.
18. Firms can utilize relevant academic scholarship to better promote the common good. Positive Organizational Scholarship (Cameron et al. Citation2003) represents an especially important firm resource to appreciate how “attention to the enablers (e.g. processes, capabilities, structures, methods), the motivations (e.g. unselfishness, altruism, contribution without regard to self), and the outcomes or effects (e.g. vitality, meaningfulness, exhilaration, high-quality relationships) associated with positive phenomena” (Cameron et al. Citation2003, p. 4) can create such engaged and development-oriented workplace environments.
19. This delineation does not imply that firms are necessarily disinterested in the poor who lie outside their value chain. The issue here pertains to the limits of managerial attention and focus.
20. Solidarity with the poor is given prominence in Christ’s life and teaching when he said that “whatsoever you do to the least of your brethren, you do unto me” (NAB, Matthew 25:40), in numerous papal encyclicals and bishop conferences (e.g. JiM, No. 31; SRS, Nos. 42, 47; CA, No. 11; EJA, Nos. 16, 23, 88), and especially in Caritas in Veritate, which said that “(f)eed the hungry (cf. Mt 25: 35, 37, 42) is an ethical imperative for the universal Church, as she responds to the teachings of her Founder, the Lord Jesus, concerning solidarity and the sharing of goods” (CiV, Ch. II, No. 27).
23. Adopting either the minimal or maximal information rule would lessen the company’s competitive advantage. In the first instance, users would be wary of purchasing products given existing information asymmetry. In the second instance, such extremely sensitive information would help competition undermine the company’s position.
25. Grameen Telecom owns a 34.2% equity stake in Grameenphone which according to its website (Grameen phone website Citation2012) is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Bangladesh covering around 99% of the country’s population and is the largest corporate taxpayer in the country.
26. The concepts of gratuitousness and business as vocation provide a compelling rationale for this assertion. Its ultimate force is derived from Christ who was sent “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord” (NAB, Luke 4:18–19).
27. Moral imagination entails the ability to understand that context or set of activities from a number of different perspectives, the actualizing of new possibilities that are not context-dependent, and the instigation of the process of evaluating those possibilities from a moral point of view (Werhane Citation1996, p. 5).
28. The author acknowledges the help provided by the editors for this insight.
29. Particular Buddhist beliefs and practices such as meditation and transcendence can be extremely useful in this regard because they resonate with Catholic liturgy, and spiritual retreats and recollections. Many Catholics take advantage of these occasions of worship and reflection to help them face professional and personal challenges.
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