Jason Stansbury (Calvin U.) spoke to a packed room this Thursday (10/3) on the topic of “Sin in Business”  Stansbury, who is currently the executive director of the Society of Business Ethics (2017-2022) holds a Chair in business ethics and teaches business ethics at Calvin University in Grand Rapid Michigan.

 Jason Stansubury spoke to a packed room on Thursday night (10/3) on the topic of “Sin in Business”.  Stansbury, the executive director of the Society of Business Ethics (2017-2022) holds a chair in business ethics where he teaches at Calvin University.

Stansbury provided a wide variety of examples of how sin can affect our business practices.  A key point he brought up was that all sin is originally based on something good– sin is frequently a misuse or inappropriate use of something which is good.  Making money is good, but when your concern for that trumps all other concerns–your responsibilities to family, others, and basic honesty, it  is inordinate.  The sin we frequently see in business is when we inordinately love something– and love it more than God.

Stansbury emphasized our responsibility, as well as the gradual effects of sin.  In a memorable example, he gave the example of drinking beer.  The first beer you drink has some influence on the second and third, but typically one is still free at that point, but if you get to your 8th beer, it is likely you have given up quite a bit of that original freedom,and the beer is making the decisions.  This is similar in business situations, where your first act of committing fraud may lead to a second, and soon you find yourself neck-deep and almost inextricably caught in a pattern of doing business from which it can seem there is no escape.   This shows us that it is very important to be concerned with the first decisions one makes– for that decision can lead to a gradual erosion of free will.

Stansbury also highlighted structural sin, and spoke of the important effects of a company’s culture and its expecations on the behavior of its employees.  A company which has habits of sin– whether they be dishonesty, fraud, sexual harassment, inordinate focus on profit over all other humane concerns, etc– will habituate its employees into those sins as well.

After the public talk, Stansbury met with our Business Faith and Common Good seminar group.  AMong other things, he shared how that, as a young bright ambitious employee working for a firm in the Detroit area, he found himself becoming a person he did not want to be through the culture in which he was working.  ANd when he would raise ethical concerns about things he saw, he was frequently told that such decisions were above his pay grade and he needed to ‘stand down’.  So at 25 he made the choice to go get a Ph.D. in organizational behavior, and subsequently went to Calvin.  His passion for living authentic lives with integrity was evident to the students, and Creighton was blessed to have him on our campus.