by Fr. Gerald Cavanagh, SJ

We are a business culture. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan are successful and highly rewarded business people. With their unique talents, each is a model for millions of Americans.

But there are other models. I was attracted to the Jesuits by Ignatius, who affirmed the world and urged all of us to be leaders. I realized the profound influence that business has on our lives, and I aspired to bring the values of Jesus to business in the positions I held at several firms before entering the Jesuits. Intending to teach, I earned a doctorate in business at Michigan State as I sought opportunities to apply Gospel values to business.

Ignatius and our Jesuit tradition urge us to build bridges between the sacred and the secular, between the Gospels and business. Now, as a teacher, writer, and lecturer on business ethics, I bring an ethical perspective to complex global, personal, and business issues. I am fortunate to have the background to shed light on some of the most important questions that face modern societies.

Fr. Cavanagh's American Business Values: With International Perspectives is in its fourth edition.

I ask my students at the University of Detroit Mercy to reflect on their own values and goals -- with regard to family, career, learning, leisure, and spiritual growth -- and to articulate those goals in a brief paper. My idea is that everyone, including managers in the business world, can make important decisions with greater confidence and come to better conclusions when they have self-knowledge, without which they risk becoming victims of external pressures and the expectations of others. For most of my students, this exercise is the first time they have sat down and spelled out their own life goals. Some, surprised at what they find, determine to change those values and goals.

I also ask students in my graduate business classes to do volunteer work with poor people in Detroit. Almost all of them live in the city's suburbs, work full-time, and have families, so they are understandably reluctant to sacrifice the time. Nevertheless, they deliver meals to disabled and elderly, tutor young people, and help at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, becoming "men and women for others,"as the two most recent Jesuit superior generals, Frs. Pedro Arrupe and Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, have urged all of us to be.

When reflecting on their experience, most confess that they were afraid when they went into the more battered areas of Detroit but that those fears evaporated when they met the lonely and grateful elderly or eager young adolescents trying to learn. They found it rewarding to be able to help, and it made them more understanding of poor people.

It is also in the classroom setting that I call to my students' attention a larger picture, that of the free market, which has many advantages -- it provides jobs and income and makes products and services available at low prices. Free markets also encourage the human qualities of self-sufficiency, flexibility, and creativity. There are, however, major problems with the market economy that I bring up with my students. Downsizings, for instance. When middle managers are phased out, the loss of their experience creates longer working hours and on- the-job stress for those left behind. Much of our economic growth depends upon low-priced resources -- petroleum, copper, tropical rain forests among them -- that are being used up. Globally, sweatshops are common, where teenage girls sew our clothing and shoes for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, for maybe $2.50 a day. Abroad, corruption and bribery are routine; at home, business planning is short-term and little concerned with the welfare of future generations.

The advertising that drives markets encourages us to measure our worth by what we possess, everything from clothes to houses. It urges consumption of the extravagant, including gas-guzzling cars and designer shoes. We thus lose freedom and become slaves to having more things, succumbing to the "buy now pay later"pitch that increases personal debt.

Further, the gap in income between the rich and the poor is growing, both in the United States and in other countries. The incomes of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, and other business, sports, and entertainment stars are enough to provide drinkable water, education, and health care for millions.

Our longstanding efforts to encourage freedom, democracy, and free markets are often undermined by the actions of some capitalists. As a result of these defects (should we call them sins?) in the free market system, fundamentalist groups in India, Iran, Germany, Indonesia, and other countries condemn both the system and the United States. I discuss these problems in class with the help of my book, American Business Values: With International Perspectives. It is rewarding when I hear from faculty from California to New York that the book challenges their students and stimulates classroom discussion.

I am also rewarded by the work I do as a Jesuit educator outside the classroom setting. This past summer, I joined 55 deans and faculty members from 20 Jesuit business schools who gathered at Seattle University to examine the competitive strengths of their schools. Organized by Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, (see pp. 22Ð24) and Dr. Karen Brown, the conference enabled participants to examine the development of ethics, character, compassion, spirituality, volunteer and service learning programs, and special concern for the poor within each Jesuit business school. Participants also expressed interest in sharing in the spirit of Ignatius through the use of the Spiritual Exercises and through ongoing formation programs for faculty and staff.

Those who attended the conference were doing so in the tradition and spirit of the early twentieth-century Jesuits who realized that business needs responsible leaders and that it is important to educate those leaders in Jesuit universities. That education is true to Jesus and our Jesuit roots only if we communicate social justice and a special concern for the poor.

During the coming year each Jesuit university in the United States will do a careful examination of its faith and justice policies and activities in order to reflect on its progress. Each is invited to a conference, "The Commitment of Social Justice in Jesuit Higher Education,"which will examine how this commitment has affected programs, curricula, and the attitudes of students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

As a way of supporting the development of business ethics and business's social responsibilities in other parts of the world, I represented the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools (IAJBS) at the World Congress of Jesuit Alumni/ae in Sydney in the summer of 1997, where I led a panel on "What Values Can One Expect in Business in the 21st Century."I spoke about having personal goals in one's life, caring for others, leadership in concern for the poor, prayer support groups for business people such as the Woodstock Business Conference (see p. 16), sustainable development, and global principles of business ethics. The talk was simultaneously translated into French and Spanish for the 350 delegates from 30 countries.

The IAJBS, formed in Barcelona in 1992, has also met in Brazil, Indonesia, the United States, and Belgium; next January the group will meet in India. These meetings provide a mutual communication and support network for Jesuit business schools on every continent. In a global economy it is essential to understand other nations and cultures. It is impossible for a single, isolated university to educate globally. But Jesuit educational institutions, with 2 million students in 66 countries, have a network that Harvard, Stanford, and Yale would die for.  

Fr. Gerald Cavanagh, SJ, is the Charles T. Fisher Chair of Business Ethics and Professor of Management at the University of Detroit Mercy. He has lectured internationally and consulted with businesses, governments, and universities. He has written numerous articles and five books, including Ethical Dilemmas in the Modern Corporation, Blacks in the Industrial World, and The Businessperson in Search of Values.