Bill Gates, Call Your Office
Michael Novak, Business as a Calling: Work & the Examined Life
Susie Lammers
April 1, 1997
Michael Novak, Business as a Calling: Work & the Examined Life (The Free Press, 1996), 246 pp.
Big business is the punching bag of our culture. Blamed for everything from global warming to the demise of traditional values, business is gaining on politics in the race for the most beat-up reputation. Bill Gates's astronomical salary and monopolistic power and Kathy Lee's clothing produced by the hands of impoverished Asian children are only the latest examples of what is decried as the moral decline of American business. Yet the shelves of Barnes & Noble are crammed full of books taunting readers with such titles as Having it All, Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less, Think and Grow Rich, and Passion, Profit&Power.
One book on those shelves provides a balanced commentary between these misguided extremes. Michael Novak's Business as a Calling rescues business from the boxing ring, thoughtfully exploring its noble origins without succumbing to an extravagant glorification of the material wealth
business creates. What Stephen Covey has done for the individual business life, Novak does for corporate business life—he recalls its moral purpose and illustrates its unique spiritual requirements.
...
Novak's three cardinal virtues of business are creativity, community, and practical realism. These, he submits, are the internal moral behaviors essential for the success of business—and necessary even before traditional questions of ethics are pondered. As a result, the calling of business inherently requires more rigorous standards than ever set forth by traditional codes of business ethics. "Men and women of business enjoy creating something that did not exist before," writes Novak. In this pursuit, whether they ...
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