Category Archives: Book updates

Book updates

“Profit with a Higher Purpose” book on Amazon!

We are excited to announce that the latest edition of our Christian guide to business leadership is now available on Amazon for purchase in either paperback or Kindle format. The paperback comes with a free matching Kindle download.

Bringing the rule of God to the business world will improve the lives of thousands the world over. This transformation must start with Christian business leaders acting on their faith when they are at work, not just when they go to church. Our hope and prayer for this book is that its message will reach many. For some, it may be a wake-up call and a challenge, for others it may simply be an additional resource on their faith journey.

But first, we need to reach as many people as possible with this message. So we are humbly asking for your help in getting the word out:

  1. SHARE. Please forward this email announcement to your friends, share our related posts on LinkedIn or FaceBook, and retweet our Tweets about the book.
  2. REVIEW. Kindly post a review – even a very short one – on the Amazon book page and/or on GoodReads.
  3. CONNECT. Please connect us to people and organizations who might be interested in the book, whether media personalities, book reviewers, business leaders, clergy or academic institutions.

Today’s press release and the rest of the press kit can be found here.

Regards,

Peet van Biljon and James C Sprouse

Author blogs, Book updates

New Edition and New Title for our Business Ethics Book!

We are excited to announce that a second edition of our business ethics book will launch this spring under the new title, “Profit with a Higher Purpose”.

Here is a sneak peak of the brand new cover design.

We are aiming for an Easter release. Stay tuned for further announcements!

Peet van Biljon and James C Sprouse

Foreword to the Second Edition

Each of us has our own God-given purpose. If we live out this purpose in our work lives and work hard to do the right thing every day, it will not only add up across the entire economy, but powerful network effects will come into play, reinforcing and accelerating our individual efforts for the greater good. This is because people who see us will act on our good example, and yet more others will act on their example, and so on. The metaphor that Jesus used in his day was that of yeast: “And again he said, ‘To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’” (Luke 13:20-21)

The first edition of this book was published in 2016 under the title “Business Ethics for Executives – a Christian Decision Guide”. The book had a warm reception from most everyone who read it. However, we realized after a while that the original title was limiting our potential readership to those interested in the rather narrow genre of business-ethics books. While the book indeed covers business ethics quite extensively, it is more than another ethics book. It is a book advocating ethical business leadership based on time-tested Judeo-Christian principles. In the pages that follow we challenge business leaders – especially those of faith – to embark on a journey of personal and professional growth. That makes it a leadership and personal growth book, maybe even more so than an ethics book.

In this second edition we have added references to some of the latest ethics-related news stories, as well as to noteworthy new research on economic topics like executive compensation and the impact of automation.

We hope and pray that this book will help our readers align their daily business decisions more closely with their faith and thereby contribute to a transformation of the business world into one that is more people-centric than profit-centric. After publishing the first edition, we were greatly encouraged by meeting so many people of faith in the business world who already share this purpose and live it every day. If you are one of them, we hope this book will be a resource for you as we travel the road together, following in the Way of Jesus. And if you are new to this journey, you should know that you will not be alone and that there are many others who will walk with you. We invite you to join us!

The authors, March 2017

If you want to know more about our aspiration for this work, please have a look at the interview we did before the first edition was published.

 

Book updates

What’s in the Book?

Back Cover_webFront Cover_web Our book is on track for a late August release on Amazon, so please stay tuned!

In the mean time, I want to share the chapter headings (with notes) so people can get a better sense of the content.

As you can see, we’ve tried to cover a wide spectrum of business and work life decisions.

1. “Our Business Lives in Perspective” – the purpose of our work
2. “Being the Boss” – burdens of leadership
3. “The Laborer is Worth His or Her Wage but Doesn’t get It” – fair compensation and inequality
4. “The Big Time Crunch” – work hours, rest and productivity
5. “The Many Sacrifices of the Ideal Worker” – family and relationship costs
6. “Temptations of a Salesperson” – unethical sales techniques
7. “Slaves to the Revenue God” – harmful products and consumption patterns
8. “A Costly Choice: Whom Will You Serve?” – societal costs and layoffs
9. “Between Automation and Globalization” – helping workers adjust
10. “Shackles of the Shareholder-Primacy Demon” – refuting shareholder-primacy ideology
11. “Playing on the Ethic Line” – typical ethical temptations
12. “A Principled Life in an Imperfect World” – personal coping strategies

Posted by Peet van Biljon

Author blogs, Book updates

Wrong Choices Are Always Easy

A new and exciting book on business ethics will be available to you in August.  Look for it on Amazon and elsewhere: Business Ethics for Executives – A Christian Decision Guide.

Making ethical business decisions is never easy. Sometimes, the more difficult the choice the more you become aware it’s the right choice. Wrong choices are always easy.  Every chapter of our book explores its topic from two perspectives: business and religion. We believe the insights provided will challenge Christian business leaders and executives to set the bar higher.
Peet and I intentionally wrote this book to engage our readers in an on-going conversation about business ethics. Up for discussion are employee compensation, management and employee expectations, product and worker globalization, and seeing a new way through the variety of decisions executives and employees face in the twenty-first century.
As a pastor, I’ve watched and guided churches through agonizing struggles over employee job expectations, equitable and fair compensations, retirement accounts, insurance, etc. I’ve seen well-meaning people adjust their values when finances was the main driver and the institution’s needs were guarded more and valued more than the employees’needs. We all get it; it’s the world we live in. Even in the church we can make the use of money and church finances a sacred cow.
One of our hopes for this book is that it will change the default of how most of us do business on a daily basis by giving our readers grist for the ethical decision making mill. We don’t assume that business executives will make the same decisions as Peet or I would. Business Ethics for Executives will change and elevate the conversations about how and what decisions are made. Sometimes, that’s as good as it gets.
I like what co-author Peet van Biljon said about this book: “it’s a contemporary business book shaped by Christian values, not a Christian book for business people.” For most people, a large portion of the meaning derived from life comes from and is defined be the work we do. Business Ethics for Executives is concerned with not simply what we do for a living, but how we live with what we do. Business executives, upper and mid-level management, and all other workers search for meaning and purpose in life, often through our work and those with whom we work. Passion for our work product, and loyalty toward co-workers and management, are all entangled in our desires and expectations for what is fair and equitable. When these concerns are mutually shared there is great potential for all making a difference with their lives and their work.
Our book engages everyone in the conversations that occur daily in the work place. Guidance and help are on the way in Business Ethics for Executives: A Christian Decision Guide.
Bookmark this website. Use the sign-up page to subscribe to our updates. Feel free to ask questions and challenge our thinking at the blog site. We’d love to hear from you and work with you in all that you do. We’re expecting an August launch of our book. Stay tuned.

Posted by James C Sprouse

Book updates

Announcing “Business Ethics for Executives”

My co-author, Jim Sprouse, and I are excited to announce our new book, Business Ethics for Executives – A Christian Decision Guide, which will be published and available for purchase on Amazon.com and elsewhere by early August. The book will be available in both paperback and Kindle format.

It is a Christian business ethics guide that challenges you to make business decisions that serve a higher purpose than maximizing profits. Think of it as Harvard Business Review meets the Ten Commandments!

The book covers topics such as leadership, fair compensation, expectations of employees, sources of revenue and pricing, how sales are made, cost reduction, automation and globalization, as well as other ethical challenges that executives are faced with every day. Each chapter is a combination of research from contemporary business sources juxtaposed with moral teachings from the Bible. While the primary aim of the book is to challenge Christian business leaders to “lift their game”, we hope that it will be a useful reference for anyone who wants to live a more moral life at work. And we pray that it will influence for the better the business decisions made in corporate America and elsewhere.

Why did we write it? Many of us attend worship services over the weekend, and hear inspirational sermons that motivate us to work for the Kingdom. Yet the working world we step into on Monday mornings is a very different environment from the one we experience in the pews. It can be all too easy to deal with this dichotomy by compartmentalizing our lives. We are after all working in legal enterprises and following ethical rules set by our companies. We do not necessarily think so much about our faith while we are at work and making our business decisions. But think how much of our waking hours are spent at work. And think how consequential so many of our business decisions are for other people. This book is aimed at bridging that gap, to help you think differently about all the core business decisions you make and how they affect people.

This is a contemporary business book shaped by Christian values, not a Christian book for people in business. It is also not written as an autobiography, though it has been influenced by the life journeys of its authors. Instead it is analytical and practical, looking at the same business issues you read about in the financial or popular press with a Christian lens. If fact, we frequently reference press reports and the latest business research out there. And while it covers typical issues thought of a ethical issues like bribery and corruption, it’s main focus is on core business decisions. For people who are trying to lead moral lives at work, any decision that impacts another human must be viewed as an ethical decision. Are our everyday business decisions benefiting or harming our fellow human beings?

Because it bridges the gap between the business world and the worship service, writing this book needed to be a collaboration between people who could bring both perspectives to bear on the issues at hand. I have spent decades in the business world and Jim has decades of experience as a pastor. Writing the book together has been a fruitful collaboration and also wonderfully enriching for both of us personally. One’s faith truly comes alive when you try to figure out how to act on it, and then, when you see the right path, to take that path even if it is not the easiest. Writing the book has been one such a leap of faith for us as authors, and we hope and pray that it will encourage our readers to take their own leaps of faith.

There are many workers in God’s vineyard and we are just two of them. We want to acknowledge and celebrate the many Christians who are already actively involved in workplace ministry. We hope this book will be an additional resource for you and encourage you to reach out to us with any suggestions or requests.

Please bookmark this website and use the sign-up page to subscribe to our updates. We will let you know when we post new blogs and material here. For example, we will be posting a video interview with the authors in a couple of weeks and will also share free extracts from the book with our subscribers in the run-up to the August launch.

Posted by Peet van Biljon