Howard Harris
Friday, 9 May 2025
This paper is an intended expansion and response to Professor Andrea Soberg’s Zadok Paper S291 Are Christian Business Schools Adequately Developing Leaders for Organisations with a Business as Mission Purpose? (Autumn 2025) The Papers (S289-2S91) published together in the Autumn volume of Zadok Papers explore the collaborative dynamics of the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism (L4). The concurrent issue of Zadok Perspectives (#166) is also devoted to L4. The world Congress was held in Incheon, South Korea late in 2024.
Benson’s Zadok paper S289, ‘Collaboration at the L4 Congress’, talks of the tension between mission and technology while Gordon Preece’s editorial in Zadok Perspectives #166 has Preece and a South Korean friend asking if the L4 vision was not ‘bold and captivating enough’. This lack of boldness may persist even though both Benson and Preece talk about relationships and Kina Robertshaw discusses ‘some great multicultural testimonies’. According to Soberg and others, for a business to be business as mission it must be ‘Christian led…an instrument for mission’. In my view, not every Christian-led business will be an instrument for mission. Even Jesus says as much in the parable of the foolish bridesmaids (See Matt 25 and Lk 5).
Scope
The first difference between this paper and Soberg’s is in the geographical focus. I write about and report a study of Australia. Soberg writes mainly about the US. My concern is about industry, about ‘teaching all nations’ (Matt 28.19) while Soberg is concerned with business schools that are ‘Christian led, intentionally devoted to being used as an instrument of God’s mission’. That seems to mean for Soberg that the business school is part of an institution. That may be a question of tension. As mentioned earlier that tension may be between mission and technology, perhaps between traditional Christian belief and contemporary (online) management. Another difference was and remains about location and relationships. Soberg and the other authors of Zadok Papers S289, 290 and the authors of the articles included in Zadok Perspectives #166 were at Incheon for L4 while I was home in Adelaide, not at L4. Given what Preece and others have to say about the importance of relationships, my absence might be a big problem. All the authors are younger than I am (I am now 81) and Gordon Preece is the only one I have met. The great majority of the 18 authors live more than 500 kilometres away from me (all but the 4 who live in Melbourne). Yet we all work, are training for work, or have a friend, neighbour or family member who works (among the workers I include the ordained and the academics).
According to Soberg ‘Christian universities and colleges’ should be at a natural advantage as expected by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism and much of her S291 paper is devoted to exploring whether or not global Christian universities and colleges bring about higher learning and if not why not. Soberg acknowledges that her data may not represent a global perspective, even though she mentions the collection of data from Australia and eight other countries and specifically commends ‘Alphacrucis University in Australia’.
Method
The Australian data in this paper is based on the Australian report on issues in business ethics to the Global Survey of Business Ethics (GSBE) (Pierce and Harris, ‘Australia’ 2024). The L4 conference tried to capture data and ‘onboard every participant’ by using 833 tables, and 4564 A1 canvasses (Benson, S289). L4 had the benefit of a ‘collaborative design process’. The Australian data makes no such claim so that comprehensiveness being a key ethical issues facing Australia is determined by content analysis and by a multi-person survey (Pierce and Harris). Some 63% of respondents identified as very important both leadership and ethics management. Ethics was included in the leadership courses in all Australian business schools. A majority (54%) of survey respondents identified ‘religion and spirituality’ as important in the economy and business, or very important, and only 10% wanted religion and spirituality excluded.
Leadership Guidelines – link to L4
The Innovation Initiative embarked on a Leaders of Tomorrow project after identifying the importance of leaders. Innovation Initiative was founded over 20 years ago in Adelaide. It has published seven principles for leaders, the first of which is ‘to have a vison’. The mutual recognition in the importance of listening and relationships provides a link between L4 and the Leaders of Tomorrow project along with a mutual recognition in the importance of listening and relationships. That is so even though the participants at L4 were mainly practitioners and the Innovation Initiative team is mainly composed of retired academics.
Conclusion – listening and relating are important, Zadok matters
All three projects: L4, GSBE and the Innovation Initiative’s Leadership Guidelines, involve Business Schools. Andrea Soberg’s Zadok paper S291 is specifically about business schools mainly from the US, and ‘how people are trained…to lead oganisations with a business as mission (BAM) purpose’. Pierce and Harris’s GSBE report is grounded in Australian business schools, and Australian business schools underpin the Innovation Initiative. Leadership and listening are important, however one looks, especially if one is looking when at L4 or at Australian business schools. Soberg found it so at the Australian Alphacrucis, Pierce & Harris more generally in Australian business schools, and the Innovation Initiative more widely still. This is not because Jesus says so (Matt 28.19) or because the Great Commission in Mt 28 calls us to action, but as both Jesus and the Great Commission are written or spoken in the Greek of the first century Roman Empire the ‘current’ language at the time the language of early biblical translation.
Soberg asks the question of whether ‘the best BAM (Business as Mission) training…occurs[s] at Christian business schools.’ Pierce & Harris found a majority of Australian business schools who placed ‘religion and spirituality’ as important in the economy and business. The persistence of Ethos and Zadok suggest that business as mission is alive in Australia, and that Ethos and Zadok can accept some kudos or responsibility for this.
Howard Harris recently completed a term as a member of the board of St Barnabas College in Adelaide, part of the University of Divinity. Initially graduating as a chemical engineer Howard worked in industry for many years overseas (Fiji) and in Australia (country & city, NSW & SA). He is a member of the Anglican Synod in Adelaide, and of Innovation Initiative which recently issued a set of Leadership Guidelines. He was for a time Head of the School of Management at UniSA and President of the Australian Assn for Prof’l & Applied Ethics (AAPAE), [Secretary-General of ISBEE (Int’l Society for Business, Economics & Ethics). He is a member of the SA chapter of the Aust Academy of Liturgy.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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