Abstract
This paper aims at discussing the ethical and legal foundations of the two-factor motivational theory and the impacts of the biblical scriptures on business ethics. The religious perspectives discussed here include the Catholic social doctrine and teaching (CSD/T) and the natural law of antiquity. This work builds a conceptual framework from the CSD/T and natural law that can be adopted by business leaders to develop an ethos of humanistic management. This framework forms the concrete needs bridge between contemporary business-leaders and time-tested Christian behaviors. Human dignity has been used to portray the idea that businesses are built on dynamic social networks to fulfill human needs. The ultimate framework virtues and principles are guided by a logic that inspires excellence as concern for human welfare lay a foundation for the long-term prosperity of business. This paper portrays the conceptual framework used to examine the two-factor motivational theory. The study also represents firm leadership challenges that transform ethical prism of virtues and principles and mechanisms for results and feedback. Each element and its effect on humanistic management are described in the accompanying narrative. Multiple biblical scriptures and their implications on human dignity are also discussed in this narrative. Company questions and examples are provided to illustrate how the conceptual framework can be adapted to benefit human prosperity.
Keywords
Human dignity, Theory X and Theory Y, spirituality and business models
Introduction
To view employee motivation, Douglas McGregor proposed Theory X. This theory states that the management’s role in a business is to assemble the factors of production, including human labor, for the business’s economic good. Theory X assumes that a person has no ambition, wants no responsibility, follows rather than leading, dislikes work, and attempts to avoid it, not intelligent (gullible), is self-centered (does not care about organizational goals), and resists change. This theory assumes the average person works only for money and security. Theory X approaches management from a hard approach to a flexible approach. The hard approach is based on close supervision, tight controls, coercion, implicit threats, and harsh control and command conditions. On the other hand, the flexible approach relies on a harmonious and agreeable approach that offers hope with an objective that the employees will cooperate when asked to do so. However, none of these approaches is optimal. The hard approach leads to hard-line union demands, purposely low output, and hostile environments. The soft approach, on the other extreme, permits continual requests for more rewards in compensation for the unending work output. Under Theory X, the optimal management approach should lie in between a soft and hard approach. However, Douglas states that neither extreme is correct as the approaches of the theory are not suitable.
He argues that a satisfied need no longer motivates based on Maslow’s hierarchy. Business enterprises rely on benefits and money to satisfy employees’ lower needs, and when the needs have met, the source of motivation is lost. The satisfaction of higher-level needs is hindered by Theory X management styles. As a result, the employees will seek more compensation in an attempt to satisfy their higher-level needs. They will likely concentrate more on monetary rewards rather than the job. Monetary rewards may not be the most suitable way to self-fulfillment, but in Theory X condition, money is the only way. This theory implies that people use work to fulfill their lower needs and seek to satisfy their higher needs in leisure time. But the employees can be most productive in satisfying their higher needs. McGregor states that a control environment and command is not suitable at it relies on lower needs as factors of motivation. Lower needs cannot be a motivational factor because they have been satisfied in modern society. Under such conditions, employees would hate their work, lack interest in organizational goals, resist change, and avoid responsibility. Thus Theory X is rendered as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hence Theory Y was proposed.
Theory Y states that higher-level needs of self-actualization and esteem cannot be fully satisfied as they are recurring. Therefore the motivation of employees should be based on these higher-level needs. This theory assumes that under these conditions, people will be responsible employees, will be committed to their goals bestowed to them work can be as natural as play and rest. Employees would be self-directed to meet their work objectives if they committed to them, given that creativity and ingenuity are common in the population, most employees can handle responsibility.
The assumptions give room to align personal objectives with organizational goals by utilizing the people’s own quest for fulfillment as the motivator. Theory Y management avoids a soft approach. However, McGregor discovered that tighter measures needed to be relaxed because some employees have not reached the level of maturity. This is to help employees develop a level of maturity. If Theory Y holds, the company would decentralize control and reduce the number of management levels. It would broaden the scope of an employee’s job and offer more opportunities to satisfy ego needs. Besides, there would be a chance for participative management. The employees will be involved in the decision-making process, which will provide them with some aspects of control over their work environment. Again the firm will have performance appraisals where people will set targets and participate in their evaluation. These conditions, if properly implemented in a company, would motivate the employees to work. Thereby satisfying their high personal needs in their works.
Conceptual frameworks
Naturally, humans are inspired by goodness, beauty, and logic and repelled by evil. Modern business culture has pressures that make it difficult to differentiate what lies between. As a person climbs the ladder of success, he is likely to be stack on the things he should do. New sources for improving business ethics should be devised. Firms cannot prosper without a foundation in moral norms. Human dignity and humanistic management are the keys to firm endurance. Corporates are failing because they lack faith-inspired lessons. They don’t act on the real good in spite of the apparent attraction on the good exerts. This paper provides a practical ethical foundation for effective and just managerial practices. Ethics are foundations of right and wrong standards that guide human actions. They are pillars of rights, obligations, fairness, and specific virtues of human doctrines. This paper is guided by the rich catholic literature and numerous efforts of people who incorporated catholic teachings into management models. A human dignity model is drawn from these doctrines to guide business ethics. Concepts from natural law and CSD/T that offer the framework foundation are reviewed in this paper. Conceptual underpinnings are also described.
Natural Law
A framework of good conduct is needed to guide our ethical reasoning. Natural law provides a foundation for making good decisions. This law dates back to Aristotle and is composed of human conduct and behavior insights that were built into our nature by our Creator. This law is designed through natural human reason (Engelland, 2017, p.31). It is common sense that disrespect of practical instructions leads to suffering. This law is universal and applicable to ethical issues firm leaders face. The framework proposed aligns itself with the premise that ethical firms practice. It does not rely on positive law but relies on natural law.
This law emanates from natural sources and is sort of a higher law, one that has been naturally implanted into the human mind. Thomas Aquinas states that “humans are capable of understanding certain general principles implanted in human nature” and highlights that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided” (Wenner 2018). This is the first principle of Natural Moral Law. Nemeth (2017) interpreting Aquinas highlights that “There is a natural law whose common principle-universal, indemonstable, self-evident, and immutable command always and without exception” (p.98). The law is rooted in the human heart and is rational (Mea & Wall, 2016, p.8). George and Tollefsen (2013, p.3) state that the “first principles of practical reason are self-driven and underived.” For example, murder a common evil to all societies. According to Schockenhoff and McNeil (2013, p.3), “the insights of natural law are not simply unrelated to the anthropological constructions of meaning that offer us an image of successful human existence.”
This law dates back to philosophies of the Stoics, Plato, and Aristotle (George &Tollefsen, 2013). Aquinas expanded on this law by stating that pagans can lead moral lives if they act rationally with this law. The law develops practical fundamentals for the choice that reach their principles in the good of people, even in businesses. The economic context is one of fulfilling one’s ultimate desires as a channel for self-actualization. Natural law is fundamental in CSD/T ethics and in human dignity conceptual framework.
Catholic Social Doctrine and Teaching
Most Christian ethics formulations don’t appeal to postmodern business culture. Legalistic norms have failed and thus the need for religious sources to intervene. The business character can be improved by intertwining faith and reason. Christian philosophers have made significant impacts on business ethics (Brixler et al. 2017). Christian philosophers, for centuries, championed for fairness in contracts and transactions. Francisco de Vitoria initiated international law while Theologian Bartolome de las Casas fought for universal human rights in the sixteenth century (Scott, 1934). In the nineteenth century, the Church started fighting for human rights. Hence, scholars of Christianity made the economic world profound out of the profane. The Christian scholars explicitly stated that orderly business leads to spiritual uplifting.
CSD/T offers significant ideas for decision making and ethical management practices. The Church teaches on matters of social justice such as wealth and poverty, social organization, the role of the state and economics, and criticize relationships matters in institutions and among people. The stage for ethical, economic behavior principles was set by Leo’s encyclical Rerum Novarum (Pullen 2018). Countless catholic documents and encyclicals guide business ethics such as the catechism, Vatican Council, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2004, 2012; Benedict XVI, Francis and John Paul II. These documents guide Christian behavior to uphold greater integrity in business activities. The authoritative document teaching catholic social behavior is the “Compendium.”
Conceptual Framework Implications
The current economic world is increasingly changing due to technological advancement. Nevertheless, the CSD/T provides coherent ethical principles to guide the changes.
The relevance of the moral guidelines is explained in the Catholic Church’s global reach. Also, academic researchers can gain from CSD/T doctrines. Understanding CSD/T and natural law improve our knowledge of human dignity as it relates to business activity. Human dignity is an ideology that every individual has a moral value that lives within their instincts. It is the aspect that makes a human a person. Clark and Mattson (2011) state that this context is “in unhelpful disarray … (being) variously viewed as antecedent, a consequence, a value, a principle, and an experience from philosophical, legal, pragmatic, psychological, and cultural perspectives” (p. 303). Human dignity is described by Mele (2015) as an ideology that every person is worthy of respect, honor and esteem. According to Novak (1998), human dignity can be traced back to Dignitas of the Latin that specifies a form of an imposed recognition obligation. In some aspects, human dignity principles contradict the common good but can be improved by the common good (Smith 1995). Human dignity appears abstruse, but its significance is more specific in CSD/T. Persons are both ends in themselves, according to John Paul II’s formulation. “Responsible subject, one endowed with conscience and freedom, called to live responsibly in society and history” (p. 119).
In the business environment, individuals are more than one element in a means of production. They are humans, which is the purpose. Each person “ought to be affirmed for his or her own sake,” according to Salvato (2018). Human dignity in a work context has two dimensions, dignity “in” work and “at” work, an insight offered by Bolton (2010). Dignity in work involves concepts such as work satisfaction, respect for workers, personal development, the importance of work itself, and autonomy. On the other hand, dignity at work involves voice, reward, security, equal opportunity, and wellbeing. Human dignity is viewed by Mattson and Hayes (2017) “as a commonwealth of individually assessed wellbeing, shaped by relationships with others, affected by the physical world and framed in terms of values” (p. 303).
The human dignity approach to people contradicts direct dealings that characterize some business premises, where rather than having a personal relationship, they have transactional relationships. Most people in the world believe that work can be anything but dignifying. According to Clike (2019), “the real world economy is also replete with unequal power relations: if workers are often “forced” to choose among jobs that are demeaning, exhausting, and health threatening, then economic freedom would also require corrective action aiming to equalize power among economic agents” (p. 188).
Catholic doctrines suggest that when one person represents the ultimate end of society, the hierarchy of things is subordinate to the order of people, not vice-versa. Sison et al. (2016) suggest that according to human beings, their dignity is based on their personhood, resulting in a personalist principle. This phenomenon (Human dignity), if applied to work, the objective would be to serve the other. The ontological significance of a being is the person’s key value but not his or her individual contribution, achievement, or talent (Svd 2019). Management of human is viewed in many ways. The development of human virtue orients the human condition (Wagner 2018). According to John Paul, every individual is a “psychophysical unity, each one a unique person, never again to be repeated in the universe” (p. 68). He defends the concept of human dignity by referring to ancient truths that human beings are characterized by free will and intellect. John Paul’s approach is an alternative to various modern major business assumptions of ever-greater materialistic goods.
A spiritual outlook can help improve economic ethics in the face of a modern business climate that values materials over persons. Corporate culture is also improved by ancient religious lessons and philosophies that add something new to modern business ethics. The Church’s more recent teachings have triggered a century’s worth of economic development. The Catholic Church has developed a rich literature to guide economic activity during the emergence of a more dynamic economy Industrial Revolution. This paper has provided a practical ethical framework for just and effective managerial practices. It makes the case that firms can benefit from CSD/T to build an ethos of humanistic management. Although some business leaders would be unlikely to accept religious premises, CSD/T principles and virtues provide a time-tested set of ethical concepts that can contribute to human flourishing in the context of a business.
Important concepts from natural law and CSD/T have been highlighted, unified, and conveyed in the rhetorical device, Human Dignity. Two leadership virtues, magnanimity, and humility have been incorporated in this framework. Humility is the virtue that enables leaders of business to recognize the talents they possess and understand their weaknesses and limitations so that they can call upon the expertise and strengths of other people for a unified purpose. On the other hand, the act of struggling to achieve great things concerning one’s natural talents is called magnanimity.
The Church provides guiding principles but does not offer technical solutions. Benedict (2009) says that Benedict (2009) states, “Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value” (Sect. 9). Virtues and principles derived from CSD/T provide a background for thinking through business challenges that result in desirable results. The key objective is to concentrate on ethical thinking and to act at a greater level.