Wisdom-Based Business

Applying Biblical Principles and Evidence-Based Research for a Purposeful and Profitable Business

Hannah J. Stolze

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780310107293
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Make Your Business Purposeful and Profitable

At its best, business is both purposeful and profitable, dynamic and gainful, commercial and rewarding. Far from being opposites, good business and good behavior go hand-in-hand, and biblical principles can align with best practices. In Wisdom-Based Business, marketing and supply-chain professor Hannah J. Stolze draws principles from the Bible's wisdom literature and from evidence-based research to create a framework for business that is oriented toward excellence and sustainability. This book addresses import issues such as:

• The virtue of profit
• Servant leadership
• Wisdom-based values, such as long-term over short-term, stakeholders, and quality
• Beneficial outcomes of wisdom-based business, including reputation and comparative advantage
• The ultimate outcome of eternal impact

Intended for business students and working professionals alike, Wisdom-Based Business demonstrates how to pursue profitability to the honor and glory of God. Unique among Christian books on business, it helps readers make the right decisions in business by presenting:

• Biblical Principles. Drawing upon the Bible's wisdom literature, each topic addressed is undergirded by insights from Scripture.
• Evidence-Based Research. Recommendations are thoroughly grounded in the best and latest research in the field.
• Case Studies: Each chapter demonstrates how the principles can be lived out in the real world, amid the inevitable challenges and competition all business confronts.

Any Christian who works in the marketplace or is training to work in the marketplace will benefit from Wisdom-Based Business' practical guidance on how to reflect Christian values in their corporate tasks and strategies--and on how those values can be not hindrances but keys to success.

CHAPTER 1

WHY WISDOM?
WHY BUSINESS?

[Solomon] composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. . . . People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon; they came from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.

—1 Kings 4:32–34

Nothing compares to wisdom. Those who find it gain understanding and value far more profitable than silver and gold, more precious than rubies.¹ Where can wisdom be found? As I have pursued wisdom over the past decades, I have found it in expected and unexpected places: among friends and family as I navigated changing career and seasons of life as well as in the marketplace and in the day-to-day transactions of business.

Throughout my business career, I have served as a US Army soldier, a global supply chain manager, and a supply chain professor. In each role, I sought wisdom. I found wisdom in the advice of commanding officers as I started out in psychological operations (PSYOPS). When I moved from PSYOPS to ordnance (Army explosives supply), wisdom was there in the help of a sergeant first class. I ultimately landed in public affairs as a broadcast journalist with a full scholarship to pursue my MBA. I found wisdom in the counsel of many as I shifted to civilian work as an operations manager overseeing the global supply chain of polypropylene (plastic) packaging for a packaging importer. With wisdom as my friend, I engaged people all over the world. My network grew to span Guatemala, India, and China with manufacturing customers including PepsiCo and ADM in the US. After the completion of my MBA, I spent a few restless years working in packaging imports before I shifted my focus to higher education.

Amidst the splendor of fall, my family uprooted from our home in the Chicago suburbs and moved to the beautiful mountains of Tennessee. With the aim to gain skills, business knowledge, and wisdom, I began my PhD in business at the University of Tennessee specializing in logistics and marketing. My husband transitioned his career to Knoxville, Tennessee, and my two children, at that time ten months and four years old, quickly adjusted to being southerners.

In the PhD program, I immediately found myself working on contract research for the Department of Defense and partnering with Fortune 500 companies to discover the best practices for sustainable supply chain management. Not previously an environmentalist or particularly knowledgeable about social and environmental practices, I was on the fast lane to learning all I could about the profitable applications of sustainable management. I learned quickly that this involved the flow of products from raw material to the end customer while reducing pollution, empowering people from farm to retail, and pursuing a net positive impact for profitability, people, and the planet. I sat with business leaders as they discussed the importance of environmental initiatives for corporate cost savings and to meet customer requirements. Across these conversations, I glimpsed care for the customer, employee, and supplier (people), and care for the environment (creation).

We explored how these leading companies were navigating cutting-edge lean strategies in partnership with environmental initiatives. Initially, the Toyota production system employed lean strategies to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Toyota created a leaner supply chain while creating better employee engagement, more selective supplier networks, and an environment of continuous improvement. Lean strategies implemented by Toyota uniquely empowered employees to create solutions on the assembly line and to highlight bottlenecks immediately (this was not a standard practice in the assembly lines of Ford, GM, and Chrysler).

To add to the green and lean strategies, all of these organizations were operating in a global economy with suppliers and customers all over the world. We talked with dozens of manufacturing, retail, and logistics companies, including global giants like John Deere, Walmart, and FedEx. Many of these companies globalized their supply chains in search of low-cost sourcing. Low-cost, global sources prove to be a challenge to many companies as they pursue high-quality products and leaner, lower inventory levels with long supply chains.

The cutting-edge strategies² we identified through this work reflected concepts I comfortably categorized as biblical stewardship. It struck me that it was wise to produce quality products with an awareness of the resources necessary to move those products to market, from raw material to finished good. Both natural resources and people are necessary to sustain the creation and growth of a profitable product in the marketplace. I spent the next year working closely with one of the largest railroad providers in North America as I collected and analyzed data to complete my first-year research project. I found many of the same themes. These were all “secular” organizations. I didn’t have any evidence that the founders were Christian or that the current leaders had any kind of religious inclination. However, the principles of honoring people and caring for creation rang as biblical to me.

It was at this time in my PhD research that I turned to Christian books and teaching, but I couldn’t find a framework that reflected a biblical model of conducting business. Pastors seemed to focus on virtue: be a good person, preach the gospel, invite people to church, and tithe. After all, successful business leaders can use their resources to sow into the church through tithes and offerings or develop kingdom-related, nonprofit enterprises. But there was no model for how to conduct business. I found loads of virtue ethics (who you should be) but no consequence ethics (how to weigh the results of your actions). How does Scripture influence our decisions beyond personal piety? I had learned through the green, lean, and global study that most decisions in business have an impact on someone, somewhere. There are consequences to our actions every day in work, not just in our acts of service in the church. As I reflected on the science—science that indicates that treating people well and taking care of God’s creation boosts profitability—a specific passage of Scripture persisted in my study throughout the entire first year of my PhD program.

A few months before embarking on my PhD journey, on a winter Saturday in the Chicago suburbs, I had a gestalt: a moment in which all the moving pieces in a great mystery I had been pondering started to come together, a moment that guided my thinking for years to follow. That day, my pastor in Chicago hosted a Bible study. The speaker was an international guest, the wife of a gentleman who ran a church ministry training program in the UK. The topic of study for the day was “the Proverbs 31 wife.”

We all sipped coffee as the guest speaker began, admitting that she struggled with this passage. She never felt like she added up to this elusive exemplar of a woman. Ladies jumped in with stories of husbands’ expectations, marriage, child raising, and household chaos. Some talked about how they aspired to live up to this incredible woman’s example. As I sat and listened, I started to feel dissatisfied with the conversation and the reading itself. The majority of the ladies in the room didn’t grow flax, weren’t making clothing, didn’t have households full of servants, and their husbands didn’t have citywide reputations because of their actions. The passage says nothing of traditional duties of an American housewife. The Proverbs 31 woman isn’t cleaning or cooking (although she is providing meals), and the passage says nothing about her interaction with her children aside from their praise. The passage is an acrostic from A to Z (in the Hebrew alphabet). These twenty-one verses capture a woman who is leading a global company in ancient Israel to the benefit of everyone with whom she interacts.

PROVERBS 31:10–31

Aleph	10	A capable wife3 who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.
Beth	11	The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.
Gimel	12	She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.
Daleth	13	She seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands.
Hey	14	She is like the ships of the merchant; she brings her food from far away.
Waw	15	She rises while it is still night and provides food for her household and tasks for her serv...