Business for the Common Good – A Christian Vision for the Marketplace

Is business just a way to make money? Or can the marketplace a venue for service to others?Scott B. Rae and Kenman L. Wong seek to explore this and other critical business issues from a uniquely Christian perspective, offering up a vision for work and service that is theologically grounded and practically oriented. Among the specific questions they address along the way are these:What implications does the Christian story have for the vision, mission or sense of purpose that shapes business engagement?What parts of business can be affirmed and practiced "as is" and what parts need to be rejected or transformed? What challenges exist as attempts are made to live out Christian ideals in a broken world characterized by tight margins, fierce competition and short-term investor pressures? How do Christian values inform specific functional areas of business such as the management of people, marketing and environmental sustainability?Business can be even more than an environment through which individual Christians grow in Christlikeness. In this book you'll discover how it can also be a means toward serving the common good.The Christian Worldview Integration Series, edited by J. P. Moreland and Francis J. Beckwith, seeks to promote a robust personal and conceptual integration of Christian faith and learning, with textbooks focused on disciplines such as education, psychology, literature, politics, science, communications, biology, philosophy, and history.

"Couched in non-technical everyday language and written with reference to fictional life-stories of choices, problems and pleasures encountered by people in business, this book makes for an easy and enjoyable read. It can therefore be recommended to any reader interested in the question of what business can do for the common good.", "It is a useful, informative and well-written book for those who are concerned to integrate their Christian faith with their work, particularly in secular businesses and multinational companies. . . . This book is well worth reading.", "Wong and Rae have written an excellent treatise supporting those whom God has called to go into business.", "Wong and Rae have produced a warm, balanced book, engagingly illustrated with examples from the business lives of individuals and companions. They engage widely with both theological and business literature. It deserves a wide reading, especially among those Christians whose instincts or experience might lead them to doubt the place of business in the Christian life at all—and many Christian business can testify that the church often leaves them alienated. This book provides a necessary and helpful corrective to that widespread problem."

Kenman L. Wong (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is professor of business ethics at Seattle Pacific University. He is the author of Medicine and the Marketplace: The Moral Dimensions of Managed Care. Scott B. Rae (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is professor of Christian ethics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, in La Mirada, California. He is the author of Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics and (with J. P. Moreland) Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics.Together Rae and Wong have edited Beyond Integrity: A Judeo-Christian Approach to Business Ethics.