Business and Scripture Christian Views Essay

According to Henry Mintzberg (1994), managers don’t always need to program their strategies formally; sometimes they must leave their strategies flexible, as broad visions, to adapt to a changing environment. Managerial decision making is rigid and often inflexible. Organizational planning has not changed very much in the thirty years since Michael Porter introduced his strategic planning process, and may actually have regressed (Hammonds, 2001). Yet a Christian view encourages us that God’s word should be preeminent and taught to be a key source in decision-making and guide the manager in thinking about the future needs of their organizations. Biblical inerrancy is important because the alternative is that the human mind becomes a higher standard of truth than God’s own Word. Making the human mind a higher standard of truth than God’s Word is a root of pride and intellectual sin (Num. 23:19; Jer. 9:23-24; Jn. 17:17) (Grudem, 1994). The Holy Spirit also teaches, providing wisdom and guiding us into all truth (Jn. 14:26; 16:13). Please consider some of the author’s points and the scriptures highlighted below, and respond to these thoughts with your own argument for or against their positions in your initial discussion post:

• • Operations and organizations will function through integrity and accountability (Rae & Wong, 2004, p.321-336).
  • “Look here, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.’ How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, ‘If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.’ Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil” (James 4:13-17 NLT).
  • Planning needs to consider issues of justice and fairness, in carrying out the objectives of the organization (Chewning, 1990). “In a very real sense God is the sovereign planner, and we are subplanners…. So why should we plan in business at all? Because we are good stewardship and our concerns for justice demand it” (Chewning, 1990, p. 122).
  • “Most decisions leaders make do not pit one alternative that is right against one that is wrong. All alternatives have both good and not-so-good points. The leader needs to weigh all the factors and choose the one that seems best for that situation” (Chewning, 1990, p. 141).

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