• the relevance of spirituality in defining the common good and determining the role of corporations in its realization;
• the appropriate, effective use of spiritual resources in the achievement of corporate economic objectives, its implications for wealth maximization understood from both a conventional and a spiritual perspective, and its implication for the pursuit of the common good; and
• how corporations as a practical matter can contribute most effectively to the achievement of the common good.

Among the ethical challenges facing modern, democratic societies with market based economies, none is more central, significant, difficult or paradoxical than the task of defining thecommon good.   Why is this the case?  

1. Centrality and Significance:  Appeals to “the common good” are central to justifications of market economies and their regulatory structure.   This fact is reflected in the rhetoric of all the international institutions that emerged in the last century to structure and guide international trade and trade liberalization.  Examples include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the OECD.   It is central to the way in which governments have justified international treaties structuring their trade relations, for example, NAFTA.  Not surprisingly, references to the common good have also become embedded in the rhetoric of corporations, who are the principal economic actors in modern market economies.  This is clearly evident in the contribution of corporate leaders to public policy debates in liberal industrial democracies like Canada and the United States.  It is equally evident in the justification of the legal frameworks that govern corporate activities like limited liability and the protection of patents.  And it is evident in the ethics codes and corporate social responsibility policies that many multinational corporations have put in place to ensure that their activities contribute positive economic and social benefits to society.  (The Codes Compendium at www.yorku.ca/csr provides many concrete examples of this phenomenon as well as the “common good” rhetoric employed by international institutions.)

2. The corporate response:  Market economies and democracy are widely thought to be closely linked.  The mature democracies in which market economies are the most deeply entrenched are liberal in the philosophical sense of that term.  That is to say, they are culturally and morally pluralistic.  Typically, they embrace freedom of religion and have become the homes of a plurality of faith traditions, as well as those who doubt or reject the coherence of religious world views.  Culture, morality and religion have traditionally played a central role in defining the common good, though the images of what constitutes the common good and its achievement have varied widely.  Not surprisingly, therefore, definitions of what the advancement of the common good entails vary widely across a spectrum from the materialistic to the spiritual.

Building on modern economic and management theory, corporations have bypassed the challenge of and the need for articulating a view of the common good by assuming that self-interest, operating within the regulatory structures of a market economy will generate maximum collective economic utility.  The resulting paradigm incorporates two assumptions.  First, the basic moral obligation of corporations is to maximize profits within the framework of the law and thereby maximize economic wealth.  Secondly, responsibility for regulating the market and ensuring that economic wealth is distributed in accordance with the common good is the responsibility of government.  On this view, any ethical responsibility for the norms that drive or ought to drive the preferences of individuals in the marketplace, or what conditions other than the maximal satisfaction of preferences might characterize the common good, lies either with individuals and their personal values or with democratically elected governments which are accountable in turn to the preferences of individual constituents expressed in this case through the ballot box .

Seen from this perspective, faith based visions of the common good can be largely ignored by economists and corporate decision makers both because of their seeming irrelevance in a secular society and because in so far as they are a factor they will find their appropriate expression through market based satisfaction of consumer preferences.

3.  The Impact of globalization: Under conditions of globalization, the allocation of responsibilities for advancing the common good and the theoretical paradigms on which it rests are undergoing dramatic re-examination for three reasons central to our study.

a)  The private sector, dominated by the growth of large multi national corporations, has come to play an increasingly significant role in the economies of the developed world.  In the developing world, private sector investment now drives economic development.  The largest transnational corporations now have budgets that dwarf those of many nations.  Of the 15 economies with the largest budgets, six are governments and nine are companies.  Of the one hundred largest economies in the world, 51 are now global corporations and only 49 are countries (Corporate Watch).  The implications of decisions taken by transnational corporations for the well-being of the people and communities of the countries in which they do business are therefore substantial

Equally important, under conditions of globalization corporations have become a great deal freer to choose where the goods and services they provide will be produced and by implication the legal and regulatory standards that will govern their production. In many developing countries multinational corporations are essentially unregulated, except insofar as they impose environmental and social standards of performance on themselves. Individuals, communities and indeed entire countries may thus become subject to the vision of the common good that these corporations implicitly or explicitly espouse.

b)  A  major consequence of economic globalization is an erosion of the power of national governments to set regulatory standards.  WTO and regional free trade agreements like NAFTA have significantly constrained the regulatory scope of national governments.   Moreover, serious questions have arisen about both the capacity and willingness of governments to set appropriate social, economic and environmental parameters for economic activity in global and local markets. By implication, therefore, if not by explicit intention, the accelerated growth of trade and investment is the pre-eminent factor for advancing the global common good as well as that of individual countries, communities and individuals.

c)  Companies and governments now find themselves under critical scrutiny by politically active NGO’s as well as faith based organizations.  These organizations are committed to sharing information, research, as well as organizational, communication and political skills and capacity.  Their inter-related goals are to raise business conduct standards locally and globally and thereby to improve economic, social and environmental conditions in impoverished or disadvantaged communities or nations.  Their interventions have been proven to be very influential and their public credibility is high relative to that of leaders in business and government.

The intersection of these developments has fuelled a growing debate about the appropriate allocation of responsibilities, and particularly the role of multinational corporations, for ensuring that economic activity contributes to economic, social and environmental well-being in positive ways.  The debate has assumed an urgent tone in response to corporate scandals, worrisome evidence of government corruption, concerns about environmental protection and the use and abuse of natural resources, the protection and advancement of human rights, and the health and safety conditions under which goods and services are produced.  Particularly important for the purposes of our study, much of the debate is being led by faith based communities committed to rethinking their obligations as well as the assumptions underlying both conventional visions of the common good and conventional allocations of responsibility for advancing the common good in the complex, pluralistic societies of today’s world.

4.  Meeting the challenge: The goal of our project is to map the spiritual resources of the Judeo and Christian faith traditions relevant to understanding:

• the relevance of spirituality in defining the common good and determining the role of corporations in its realization;
• the appropriate, effective use of spiritual resources in the achievement of corporate economic objectives, its implications for wealth maximization understood from both a conventional and a spiritual perspective, and its implication for the pursuit of the common good;
• how corporations as a practical matter can contribute most effectively to the achievement of the common good.

5.  Our methodology:  One of the most significant challenges facing contemporary society is understanding the role of faith-based spiritual resources and insights in shaping public understandings of a value like “the common good” in a secular and pluralist society.   One of the significant obstacles faith communities face in addressing this challenge effectively is the disciplinary, denominational and sectoral fragmentation of available intellectual resources.  Disciplinary specialization has created knowledge silos.  Knowledge and insights generated in the voluntary, academic, business and government sectors are frequently not communicated within sectors let alone across sectors.  Denominational rivalries can have similar effects.

Our project is designed to address this problem of fragmentation.  It builds on research funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada whose purpose was to lay the foundations for a business ethics research network.  The research for this project discovered a rich vein of interest and expertise focused on the intersection of spirituality and corporate conduct.  We propose to build on these findings.  Our project will link the cross disciplinary intellectual resources of the Canadian institutions, research centers and individuals with expertise in Judeo and Christian ethics, corporate ethics and corporate management that our SSHRC research project has identified.

One of the consequences of disciplinary specialization in the contemporary university is the gulf that has developed between normative and empirical research.  This gulf would appear to be reflected in at least some respects in the tension that has appeared between understanding what our faith traditions teach us about how to live in the world on the one hand, and our understandings taken from science about the world in which we live.  Our religious heritage includes a legacy of insights, reflections and skills focused on identifying and applying principles and values conducive to human flourishing.  Accessing that heritage requires re-combining intellectual skills and methods of inquiry that have contributed holistically to the creation of that legacy but in our modern world have been fragmented by disciplinary specialization. Our project will attempt to bridge this gulf by creating a research team committed to integrating normative and empirical university-based research with the practical knowledge and practical research skills and experience of corporate management and voluntary sector, research-based advocacy.  

Our project will have many of the characteristics of a case study.  We will explore the theoretical and practical value of the concept of spiritual capital in mapping the contours of “the common good” and the role and contribution of corporations in its achievement as economic agents in a complex, pluralistic and democratic society.

Finally, our project has a clearly ethical and therefore normative orientation and is therefore a study in applied ethics.  There are two dimensions to this aspect of our study.  First, concepts we chose to use in describing our world shape how we see and understand that world in sometimes decisive ways.  The introduction of the concept of spiritual capital is quite clearly intended to have that effect.  We need to ask, therefore, whether categorizing the insights and wisdom of religion as spiritual capital enriches or impoverishes our understanding of those insights and that wisdom.  Second, any form of capital can be used but also abused.  What then are the ethical parameters of the use of this concept in seeking to both understand and guide the activities of corporations and those who act on their behalf in the pursuit of the common good?        

This proposal is the first step in the articulation of a cross disciplinary, cross sectoral exploration of the concept of “spiritual capital” and its application.  The team that supports this application consists of academics with backgrounds in philosophy, sociology, religious studies and theology, a senior manager of a major Canadian mining company who has a masters degree from the Vancouver School of Theology and an officer of a leading and influential Canadian ecumenical voluntary sector advocacy organization called KAIROS with a long history of church based social justice advocacy..  If we are invited to participate in stage two of this competition, we will incorporate into our project proposal and our research project if it is funded, experts identified in our SSHRC research project in economics and management.