Business Ethics?

Yes, it is a valuable exercise to compare churches and corporations during this time of 'corporate religion'. The bottom line, in my opinion, being that corporations are not 'churches,' not true 'religions', not 'spiritual' and no, corporations cannot possess soul (sorry).

And at the same time, the church is not a corporation---despite the fact that the mainline denominations have adopted management and hierarchical strategies which in fact gave birth to what we call 'modern business'. At any rate, the church that equals corporation is not the true 'church'...and if it were, we could say that the corporations in fact are the great churches based upon their philanthropic efforts, and their sway over human minds and hearts.

Hence, according to my logic, there is either one church which is 'corporate' or that the true church is not represented in organizations and hierarchical, land possessing entities, but is "from above", "not of this world", and "it bloweth where it listeth."

This was once a favorite theme for me. I argue that the software business assumes a "spiritual" PR...angels, demons, biblical names (Oracle, Prophet, Word, Genesis, Prodigy, etc...). And that it does present an earthly goal, and ideal to reach heaven from the powers of earth and it will most likely rule temporal matters, as once the Roman Catholic Church did (Inquisition=surveillance at work, monitoring of communication, generation of morality and codes of behavior (ethics), promotion or normalized views via TV drama which teach people how to react and think about all sorts of phenomena---the Church was actually more mellow in its inquisitorial styles). And the ultimate power of God from which true ethics emerges is forgotten, and painted over so that it is the corporations who bestow ethical goodness, love, support, care and blessings to the human race. Like churchgoers employees are spiritually linked to their organizations, and 'believe' in them. They fail to see where the company often takes every financial advantage of their allegiance (again like Catholicism), nickel and dime them on benefits, and expect praise and worship for paying them their due wages; meanwhile the employees are happy to be part of the team! They fail to see that no company has ever made a move that threaten their bottomline, hence never in fact met the minimum requirement for an ethical act in its true sense which is self-sacrifice, turning the other cheek, giving all that you have to give (once again the Church!). So, we have the newly emergent corporate religion on one side, the morally ambivalent Church Inc. on the other, and there is on the side a tiny little deposit of free people who realize that ethics cannot come from corporations, because a)they are soulless, and b)they are exclusively out for themselves (and if they can afford to give a little why not, it beats taxes)!

There is the old expression: The Emperor's New Clothes. This represents the modern corporations attempt to paint themselves as 'ethical' and can easily be done as long as no one recalls what 'ethics' means or studies ethics in any serious manner.

It should better be: The ethics of Little Red Riding Hood by the Wolf!

Ethics it should be remembered for thousands of years meant self-sacrifice---how it has morphed into these myriad details of codes and behavior modification I can only guess.