In an age when “big business” is often synonymous with “great evil,” it’s unusual to see someone stand up and extol the virtues of the entrepreneurial spirit. Yet, Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, chairman and CEO of the Roosevelt Group and research professor at Yale University, has written a book to do exactly that. Doing Virtuous Business is subtitled “the remarkable success of spiritual enterprise” and it is a manifesto on being both doing good business and the business of doing good.
Although he is himself a Christian (and most of the book is written from that perspective), Malloch also writes of extolling virtue as a universal good that is embraced by all faiths. He quotes both Augustine and Aristotle with equal ease while making his case that both “hard” virtues such as courage and “soft” virtues such as compassion should be part of the economic capital of a good business. In the long run these values will make a business thrive and increase the wealth and responsibility of those who practice them.
Malloch acknowledges that striving to use virtue and gaining wealth from it may seem antithetical in some ways to the teachings of following virtue for its own sake. But he points out that the success is a necessary by-product of using virtuous business is not in and of itself an evil thing. The obtaining of wealth and the pursuit of riches are not necessarily the same thing. Motivation means everything.
Throughout the book the writer presents stories and examples of people who did virtuous business, from architects to restaurant owners and from charity organizations to furniture designers, the pursuit of ethical business is shown to be not only good for the entrepreneur but for those whom they employ and serve as well.
With scandals and shady deals from large companies making the headlines on a weekly basis, it seems a bit mind boggling to think of the possibility that a huge corporation could be an instrument of virtue in the world. Yet, corporations are just groups of people and people are governed by the same spiritual laws that have existed for millennia. And, according to Theodore Malloch, doing good is just good business.
I received this book for review purposes from the blogger review program at booksneeze.com. All content of this review, however, is the product of the machinations of my own overactive mind.
