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Business in an Age of Downsizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

James M. Childs Jr.
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Abstract:

Fundamental theological and ethical themes of Luther’s thought and tradition provide a basis for appreciating both the role of business in God’s providential design and the importance of occupation for living out one’s Christian vocation. These same insights establish the ethical basis for a critical appraisal of the current practice of downsizing and its negative impact on the quality of individual lives and whole communities. While Lutheran ethics is realistic about the ambiguities of life, it is also an ethic of compassionate love seeking justice in the world of business as in all of life.

Type
Perspectives from Protestantism:
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , March 1997 , pp. 123 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1997

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References

Endnotes

1 Louis Uchitelle and N.R. Kleinfield, “One of the Battlefields of Business, Millions of Casualties,” “The Downsizing of America,” The New York Times, CXLV,50, 355 (March 3, 1996), 1ff.

2 Ibid., 2.

3 Ibid.

4 Aaron Bernstein, “This Job Market Still Has Plenty of Slack,” Business Week (Junes 24, 1996), 36.

5 “The State of Greed,” U.S. News and World Report (June 14,1996).

6 Russell Baker, “Economy’s Victims Want No Sermons,” The Columbus Dispatch (March 26, 1996), 7A.

7 The principal locations for Luther’s two realms doctrine in his own works are in “Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed,” Luther’s Works, vol. 45, ed. by Walther I. Brandt (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1962), 75–129 and “The Sermon on the Mount,” Luther’s Works, vol. 21, ed. by Jaraslov Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1956), 1- 294.

8 For a good historical analysis of the Lutheran two realms tradition see Karl Hertz, Two Kingdoms and One World (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976).

9 Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 71–72.

10 See Apology of the Augsburg Confession, art. IV,2, The Book of Concord, trans. and ed. by Theodore Tappert (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 107.

11 Martin Luther, A Treatise on Christian Liberty, trans. by W.A. Lambert, ed. by Harold J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957), especially 7,17ff., 30–31.

12 Ibid., 30–31.

13 I have dealt with this topic in my book, Ethics in Business: Faith at Work (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 126–127.

14 “Alternatives to Layoffs When Times Get Tough,” American Workplace, 3,4 (July 1995), 1–2.