The Gods of Business :: Todd Albertson
Just released last Monday, this book brings a bigger sense of scope to the idea of Business and Mission in globalized world. It is intended to help business people who are dealing with people from different cultures around the world and who likely have different religious faiths than they hold themselves.Albertson, a Christian, analyzes in plain language the world's major religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Secular Postmodernism, Shintoism, and Sikhism—and how their spiritual traditions impact business ethics.
According to Todd his next book, Doing Business the Christian Way: A Practitioner's Guide, will be published in 2008. More information about The Gods of Business is available at http://www.thegodsofbusiness.com/. Here is an excerpt from CHAPTER 1: THE DILEMMA PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460 C.E.) was the son of King Joãoof Portugal. Henry organized and financed many sea expeditions. His most famous were in search of a sea route to the rich spice trade of the Indies and along the way to explore the west coast of Africa.
Prince Henry encountered much difficulty in persuading his captains to sail beyond Cape Bojador in the southern Sahara. They believed the legend that only the "Green Sea of Darkness" existed beyond this point. They thought the sun was so close to the Earth that a person's skin would turn black. The sea boiled. Ships would catch on fire. Hidden monsters lurked, waiting to smash the ships and eat their crews!
On the first attempt Henry sent his ships with orders to keep close to the coast line. A couple of weeks after they left, they returned to Portugal. Their captains told the prince they could not find a sea route to India because they had come to the "end of the world." Henry sent out thirteen more ships, and each one came back with the same story. From our armchair in history it is easy to see how askew that worldview was. It depended on prejudices that few thought about or were willing to change in the face of evidence.
The English word "worldview" comes from the German word weltanschauung, which means a "look onto the world." The term originally was used to refer to a common concept of reality shared by a particular group of people who were generally bound by culture or ethnicity. The word has been expanded over time to reflect how an individual views the world and interacts within it.
On the fourteenth voyage commissioned by Prince Henry, the ship was blown off course, and the crew could no longer see the African coastline. The captain pointed his ship's bow east and a few days later came upon Africa again, surprised that his ship had somehow bypassed the Green Sea of Darkness.
But a few years later the captain re-discovered his worst fear. He had announced a sea route to India. Now as he sailed south along the Spanish Sahara, he came to a major rock shoal. On the approach the water became shallower and shallower. Strange currents began to develop. The captain and crew were positive that the end of the world they had missed earlier was now about to destroy them.
Undoubtedly that is how they felt. The limits of their ability to discover had nothing to do with their bravery or their goodness, nor was it charted on any accurate map of the world. Rather, the limits were mapped unconsciously by what they had subjectively envisioned—their worldview.
Why is worldview important in business? Because people of faith will approach all of their endeavors with grains of objective truth.Whatever those grains may be, they are going to be washed, sieved and filtered through subjective and unconscious ways of comprehending,acting and explaining. Some grains will be overlooked, forgotten or thrown away as inconvenient. Hence, like the Portuguese sailors of Prince Henry's day, the modern business person's religious worldview provides a mental map of how to conduct business.
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