BUSI 690 Week 8 Integration of Faith and Learning Paper Example

Strategy as Stewardship: How I Will Integrate Christian Faith With Policy and Strategy Theory as a Manager

Introduction

I manage operations for a regional building-supply distributor with eleven yards and about 400 employees. Before this course I thought of strategy as a contest for market share and of faith as a private guide to personal conduct at work. Rothaermel (2015) treats strategy as the choices and actions through which a company tries to outperform its rivals over time. This capstone has convinced me that those two areas cannot be kept apart, because every strategic choice is a decision about how to use resources that belong ultimately to God and how to treat the people affected. My thesis is that strategy, rightly practiced, is a form of stewardship, and in this paper I explain how I will bring that conviction into three areas of policy and strategy theory: mission and stakeholders, competitive advantage and capital investment.

Mission, Stakeholders and the Purpose of Business

Strategic leadership, as Rothaermel (2015) presents it, begins with a mission that states what the firm does and for whom, and it requires leaders to weigh the claims of shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers and communities. Stakeholder theory asks managers to treat these groups as ends and not only as means. Scripture goes further. Asked for the greatest commandment, Jesus joined wholehearted love of God with love for the neighbor equal to love of self (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Matthew 22:37-39), and a company's stakeholders are, in a practical sense, its neighbors. Van Duzer (2010) argues that the purpose of business is to serve the community by producing goods and services that help people flourish and by providing work through which employees can express their gifts, with profit as the means that sustains that service rather than its goal.

That view will change how I write and use mission statements. In our next planning cycle I will propose that our mission name our customers' need, contractors who cannot afford to lose a day waiting for materials, and our employees' development alongside our financial targets. More important, I will test decisions against it. When we consider closing a small yard in a rural county, I will ask not only whether it earns its cost of capital but also what the contractors and employees who depend on it will lose, and whether a smaller or shared operation could serve them.

Competitive Advantage and What Lasts

Under the resource-based view, an advantage persists only when it grows out of something a firm controls that buyers value, few others hold and competitors struggle to copy, provided the firm is arranged to use it (Barney, 1991). As a Christian, I find a tension here. Strategy teaches me to seek an advantage that endures, yet Scripture reminds me that earthly treasure decays and that the future is not mine to control (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Matthew 6:19-20; James 4:13-15). I resolve that tension by noticing which resources the theory itself says are hardest to copy. Barney's argument points to a firm's history, culture and relationships, assets that cannot be bought on the market. Those are also the assets Scripture values most: trustworthiness, diligence and care for others. The advantage that rivals find hardest to imitate is an organization whose people keep their word.

Lynn et al. (2009) developed and validated a scale measuring how employees integrate Judeo-Christian faith into their work, including their sense of calling and the way they treat colleagues and customers. Their work suggests that faith at work is observable behavior, not only private belief. My commitment is to build that kind of culture in my yards: to reward honesty when a driver reports damaged material instead of hiding it, to keep promises on delivery times even when it costs us, and to treat our people's development as part of our competitive strategy. If an advantage built that way lasts, it will be because it rests on character, and if it does not, the character will have been worth building anyway.

Capital Decisions and Counting the Cost

The group cases in this course required us to forecast cash flows and compute net present values. Jesus used the same reasoning in His picture of a builder who tallies the expense before laying a foundation, lest the half-built tower make him a laughingstock (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Luke 14:28-30). Careful analysis is not opposed to faith; it is part of faithful management. Yet an NPV is only as honest as its assumptions, and managers are tempted to adjust forecasts until a favored project clears the hurdle. Proverbs warns that the Lord detests differing weights and false scales (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 20:23), and an inflated forecast is a false scale presented to the people who will fund the project.

I will practice three habits, each simple enough that my own supervisor could check whether I kept it. I will present a pessimistic case with every investment proposal, as our team did in its cases. I will document the assumptions behind each forecast and compare them with actual results a year later, so that our forecasting improves and our optimism is checked. And I will include the effects on employees and communities in every capital proposal, even when they cannot be priced, because a decision to automate a yard or close one affects families who are not on any spreadsheet.

Conclusion

Policy and strategy theory gave me tools for analyzing industries, resources and investments, and my faith tells me what those tools are for. As a manager, I will treat the mission as a statement of service and test decisions against it, build our advantage on the character of our people, and count the cost honestly before committing resources that are not finally mine. Paul's instruction to do everything for the glory of God (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Corinthians 10:31) applies to a strategic plan as surely as to a Sunday service.

References

Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), 99-120. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639101700108

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Lynn, M. L., Naughton, M. J., & VanderVeen, S. (2009). Faith at work scale (FWS): Justification, development, and validation of a measure of Judaeo-Christian religion in the workplace. Journal of Business Ethics, 85(2), 227-243. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9767-3

Rothaermel, F. T. (2015). Strategic management: Concepts and cases (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Van Duzer, J. (2010). Why business matters to God (and what still needs to be fixed). IVP Academic.