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| E-Devotional
Dear Friend: Since the first day Sujey and I started our ServiceMaster franchise we decided that we were going to dedicate every week to the Lord. We would begin Monday mornings with a time of prayer and devotional. Well, after four years Sujey has challenged me to find a devotional that addresses all the needs of the everyday workplace and one that speaks to the heart of a diverse work force like ours. Unfortunately we cannot find one. Therefore I have been challenged to write one. From now on every Monday morning when you get to your workplace you will find our E-Devotional. This devotional is separate from the E-Letters we will continue to send to you on Wednesday. The following is my introduction to this devotional: Four years ago I had the honor of addressing various members of the US House of Representatives as well as US Senate. When I finished speaking a book table was set in the halls of the US Capitol where numerous leaders stood in line for my autograph. After this event I returned to my hotel room where extremely excited. I told my wife Sujey: "Honey can you believe this? All these leaders were in line for my autograph." Quietly she responded: "Do not forget that HE who took you up can bring you down." I hung up the phone and began to cry. I realized then that I was not going to allow the "Church" to make me their next superstar. I would help her begin her small carpet cleaning and restoration company, ServiceMaster Total Cleaning. Sujey and her parents had bought a small ServiceMaster franchise so that they could support our family while I dedicated my life to the ministry. We had learned of the ServiceMaster Company while we were both students at Wheaton College. We admire that a Fortune 500 Company, which held as its number one corporate objective to Honor God in All We Do, existed in today's corporate world. I will never forget that Monday morning when we held our first devotional. My wife, her parents and me held hands and dedicated our company to Honoring God in all We Did. We did not have a job scheduled, nor did we have any idea how we would get any work, yet, we were certain that if we lived what we believed God will add the increase. Four years later we would gross over $1.4 million dollars in revenue, as our company never failed to have a Monday morning devotional. We have overcome tremendous challenges and experienced great successes. Since that first morning Sujey and I have struggled to find a devotional that would be applicable to the diverse group, which makes up our company. We have looked for a devotional that would address the real life challenges that are faced by a person in the workplace, and speak to that person whether they are the boss or the employee. We have struggled to find a devotional that addresses the many topics that face a company, which Honors God in all it does, yet is engaged in a business world who posits that God has no place in the business world. And last we have struggled to find a devotional that is grounded on what we believe to be absolute truths, which are relevant to all our employees, no matter what race, color or gender they are, or even what form of religious expression they hold to. This devotional is our offering to an ever-changing market place. It is an offering to those employers whose place the interest of their people above those of the company. It is an offering for those employees who truly find the great fulfillment in serving others. It is our offering to the God who has blessed our family and employees with so much; the God who has gotten us through immense trials and obstacles and has never failed to meet our payroll and pay our obligations. Finally it is an offering to the God who has provided a faith friendly company for our employees to work and grow. INTRODUCTION: Business ethics is the study of what constitutes right and wrong, or good and bad human conduct in the business world. Business ethics is concerned with moral issues that arise anywhere people and business come together. When we talk about Business ethics, many people laugh about such an idea. Some joke that the term in it of itself is an oxymoron. Yet, today there are many reports about tragic stories of corporate misconduct. More than a few of these stories have resulted in felony convictions for corporate officers and millions of hard working Americans losing their entire retirements. These stories should force us not to laugh and joke, but instead to reflect and think more deeply about the nature and purpose of business, and the ethical choices we make on a daily basis not only in our personal lives but also our business lives. The word ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, which means character or custom. Today the word ethos is used to refer to the character or attitude of a specific culture or group of people. According to philosophy professor Robert C. Solomon, the etymology of the word ethics suggests its basic concern over individual character, including what it means to be a good individual, and the social rules that govern our conduct, specially the ultimate rules concerning right and wrong, which we call morality. In our everyday lives we interchange the words ethical and moral to describe people and actions we consider being good. And, unethical and immoral to describe actions and people we consider wrong and bad. When we ask: where does our moral standard come from? We must accept the most people have a certain moral code that they explicitly or implicitly accept. Yet, because the moral principles of different individuals in the same society overlap we must consider a moral code of a society where moral standards are shared in common by its members. As we consider our early upbringing, the behavior of other people around us, and implied standards of our culture, our own experiences, and our critical reflection on these experiences, it is natural to ask ourselves if in fact we can find certain moral principles that are applicable to people of diverse cultures. For the everyday businessperson what need to be considered is where these more principles can be found and what factors influence them. For many, right and wrong, or what philosophers term ethical relativism, simply is a function of what a particular society accepts to be right and wrong. These people subscribe to the theory of cultural relativism that suggests that morality is just a function of what a particular society happens to believe. This is the theory that what is right is determined by what a particular culture believes is right. Therefore, what is right in one culture is wrong in another, because the only criteria for determining what is right and wrong is the moral system of the society in which the act occurs. For these people there is no absolute ethical standard independent of cultural context, no criteria for right and wrong by which to judge the actions of others, other than that of a particular society. In essence what morality requires is relative to a society. For other people our morals are a direct by product of our religious influences. Religion provides its believers with a worldview, part of which involves certain moral instructions, values and commitments. The Jewish and Christian faith, to name two, presents humans as unique product of a divine intervention; creatures who stand midway between nature and spirit. On the one hand they are finite and bound to earth, capable of wrong doing and morally flawed, and other hand, capable of transcending nature and realizing infinite possibilities. Many American due to the influence of Western religions, their purpose in life is found in serving and loving God. For the Christian this is accomplished by emulating the life of Jesus. In Jesus' life Christians find and expression of the highest virtue-love. They love when they perform selfless acts, develop a keen social conscience and realize that others are creatures of God, and therefore very important. In the Jewish faith, and individual serves and loves God through expressions of justice and righteousness. Our faith then not only becomes a form of worship, but prescriptions for social relationships. One major example is a mandate found in similar form in every major religion of the world: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Therefore what is the nature of our morality? Is that nature based on what our religious system of belief says, or is that nature based on what our specific cultural setting has determined to be the standard? If a religious system of beliefs influences the nature of our morality, then the question becomes whose religion we follow. Even among the Christian faith there is an enormous gap between beliefs. If our specific cultural setting defines the nature of our morality, then the question is never ending in that it now becomes who or what in the society set that standard. And thus morality is restricted to time and space. Thus, if morality is defined by our culture how we do business is geographically dictated. I suggest that if we accept the premise that humans are born morally flawed and thus incapable in it of them to do what is right, and then morality must be defined by a higher power that provides the individual with moral guidance, which without the individual has no incentive to be moral. If God dictates our morals and we are accountable to Him, how we do business should remain a constant. This devotional posits that in light of all the scandals in corporate America today and what many believe is a decay in our nation's morality, if we extrapolate eternal moral principles not bound to space or time from the Judeo-Christian writings, our ethical behavior in the workplace can have a tremendous influence not only on us but all those around us. The past and present misconduct in the work place is the result of the suggestion that culture defines what a right and wrong business practices is, and that wrong is only relative to time and place. I humbly disagree. Jorge L.
Valdes, Ph.D.
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