Protestant Business Ethics Through a Matrix: the Bible, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Management-Labor Relations

Organized labor has been largely absent from discussions of management-employee relations in Protestant business ethics, which lacks a magisterium that would encourage such discussion. Given the Protestant reliance on the Bible as the main moral source for Christian business ethics, any effort to incorporate labor into business ethics needs to link the Bible to how business organizations function and to the history of labor management relations. This article first grids out Protestant approaches for using the Bible, then explores ideas drawn and developed from H. Richard Niebuhr, a U.S. theologian active in the middle of the twentieth century. His ideas of responsivity, center of value, covenant, contingency and influence are applied using fields of organizational knowledge, while being connected with the Biblical and labor history. The virtue of this ‘integrative-interpretive’ approach is that it permits determinative judgements to be made from within a thematically cohesive framework of analysis

The Dirty Work of Faith-washing in a Faith-friendly Business

Drawing on faith/spirituality at work and organizational legitimacy literatures, a case study of a large global meat company is used to deconstruct the concept of faith-friendly business and explore how faith-washing can provide a business with legitimacy and potentially distract stakeholders from irresponsible activities. In particular, I focus on the faith-friendly communications and initiatives in relation to treatment of non-salaried employees as a primary stakeholder of the company. I highlight a disconnect from religious social thought on meaningful and dignified work and many of the concepts found in the modern faith/spirituality at work literature, as well as societal expectations on health and safety in the workplace. Implications are provided for practice and research, including theoretical development in the areas of strategic legitimacy management and faith-washing in organizations

The Effect of Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” on the Hospitality Industry

Taylor Swift\u27s The Eras Tour has become a worldwide phenomenon and is the highest-grossing world tour of all time. Due to an increase in leisure travel in 2023, concerts, festivals, and live events are magnificent opportunities for hotels to harness major artists\u27 influence on the public. The central question driving this study is: How has Taylor Swift\u27s The Eras Tour affected the hotel lodging industry compared to pre-pandemic levels, and what are the implications for the future? This study analyzes data from key performance indicators (KPIs) from markets that Swift has performed thus far and compared them to their shouldering 2019 averages. The reported markets show the highest KPIs increase resulting from Swift\u27s performances. The Eras Tour positively impacted markets in both the US and South America and returned performance levels to higher than pre-pandemic levels. This research underscores the critical need to recognize the impact of The Eras Tour on the lodging industry and how crucial it will be for hotel success in the future

Tug Of War Between Opt-In And Opt-out Organ Donation Systems

The demand for organ transplants is far greater than the supply of transplantable organs. Every day, twenty people in the United States die as they await an organ transplant; this equates to roughly 7,300 people annually. Whilst organ donation can be highly effective for prospective patients, not all individuals want to take part in such an action. A person’s decision not to partake in organ donation can stem from their ethics, morality, religion, and much more. For individuals that live in the United States and do not want to donate their organs upon death, they do not have to take any affirmative actions to ensure this result because the United States is an opt-in system. Opt-in policies require an individual to “manifestly express their preferences for being a deceased organ donor.” Generally, an individual’s organs will not be donated unless the individual has expressly stated that they would like to ‘opt-in’ to donating their organs upon death. Alternatively, some nations utilize an opt-out system; this system presumes that everyone is a willing donor unless they “specifically ‘opt-out’ of doing so.” Within the past few years, several nations including Iceland, England, Scotland, Canada, and the Netherlands have switched to an opt-out system. It may be a common assumption that opt-out systems should generate more successful organ transplants since everyone would presumably be a willing donor, and because this system expands the pool of potential donors to include nearly all citizens. In Peter Singer’s example, he tells us to imagine walking past a pond and seeing a child about to drown where there is no one else readily able to help the child. Singer believes that there is a duty to rescue the child since it is “neither difficult nor dangerous” and because the benefit to the child outweighs any costs that may incur to the rescuer; this would be known as an easy rescue. However, Singer’s example of having a duty to rescue may take a different shape when within the realm of organ donation. Those in need of a new organ can be complicated recipients due to their specific medical complexities and/or conditions. Further, some argue that donees incur little costs; they argue that “donating would not clash with any of the people’s important values, beliefs, preferences, or projects.” However, can a transaction including an organ really be considered an easy rescue? Is there both a duty to save a drowning child and a duty to give your organs to that child upon your death? This article will explore the opt-in and opt-out systems within the organ donation field, and how these different systems have manifested themselves in different nations. It will be revealed that opt-in and opt-out systems do not differ much from one another; both systems come with their own respective tradeoffs

Private Clubs in Transition: Addressing Membership Challenges in a New Era

The club industry has experienced growing demand for memberships, particularly from younger generations since the pandemic, resulting in resurgent and dynamic changes in members’ behaviors and needs. However, limited data accessibility has hindered clubs\u27 ability to respond promptly to these membership changes. This study identified current issues and challenges in the club industry by utilizing secondary data from an industry survey and analyzing club members\u27 responses and comments on facilities, communication, and social events. Through topic modeling, three main themes were revealed: generational challenges, gender-related concerns, and social function-related issues. The findings indicate that there are diverse opinions and needs among members, particularly in communication and social event preferences, which reflect generational differences. Ongoing challenges related to gender and club facilities were also identified. This study suggests the importance of member clustering, comprehensive club management planning, and interdepartmental collaboration in order to meet diverse member needs and enhance club experiences

A Half Century Of Criminalizing Serious Mental Illness: Observations And Considerations

This article describes the difficulties of working with people with serious mental illnesses (PSMIs) at every stage of the criminal justice process—from arrest to post- incarceration release from prison. The needs of PSMI for mental health and social services are complex and require different case management plans and strategies at various points in the process. Severe mental illnesses (SMIs), such as schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorder, stem from abnormalities in the brain structure and neuroprocessing that cause significant distress and dysfunction. People with serious mental illnesses typically suffer from a variety of other related problems (e.g., addiction) that can complicate encounters with criminal justice professionals who struggle to develop effective supervisory and service protocols in monitoring and treating PSMI and reducing rates of recidivism

Shalom: A Judeo-Christian Response to Greed

In my recent conceptual analysis of greed, I argue that there are three different conceptual aspects, namely, a consuming desire to acquire more and more (the psychological), an inordinate love for material possession and power (the metaphysical), and an action of acquiring more than one’s share by taking what belongs to one’s fellow citizens, essentially with a calculating indifference toward others (the socio-historical). The aim of that analysis, as a foundational work, is to make sense of the vice or the moral mistake of greed in the contemporary world, especially by reviving the socio-historical aspect which is about justice. Building on that understanding, in this paper I construct a Christian response to greed with the overarching vision of shalom in Christianity, a theme that has recently gained traction in Christian scholarship on business. I aim to show how shalom effectively resists greed with responses to all the three aspects, thus offering a fuller understanding of the Christian faith in relation to greed