In his book The Mind of the CEO, Jeffrey Garten argues for greater active and direct involvement of corporate leaders in the new interdependent global reorganization of markets. He decries the “missed opportunity for society” if top business leaders, as a group, fail to recognize the strategic role they are capable of playing along with government in support of an economic agenda which balances accountability to shareholders’ profits with recognition of the vulnerability of stakeholders who find it increasingly difficult to become or remain participants in the global economic community.
Deeper and expanded social-economic involvement, however, requires executives who enjoy ethical autonomy, that is to say, “persons who are capable of remaining committed to the ethical standards inherent in their respective professions while at the same time being able to maintain a larger view of society even under pressure to do otherwise.” But given the pervasive influence of liberalism’s reluctance to allow moral and social controls over economic life it is questionable whether corporate leaders will be equipped with the moral and cultural resources to support and maintain fairness in our changing economic and political alliances. Furthermore, even though certain strains of liberalism, such as that of John Rawls, do attempt to address the claims of the marginalized in our society, there still remains a bias toward individualism together with a neutral posture as to the meaning of the common good; defining this term as simply the goods which everyone in society is able as individuals to achieve. Broader social alliances are fostered but only as a means to achieve private goals.
What is required, then, is a more intrinsic ordering of the political and economic community rooted in the notion that true social community must be the end of the common good. Such an intrinsic social ordering is found in the ongoing tradition of modern Catholic social thought, which draws upon not only the natural law social theory of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as well as Scripture, but also the insights and contributions found in the natural rights tradition of the Enlightenment. It is a tradition which has consistently argued for the ultimate subordination of economics and politics to the tasks of human fulfillment, thereby providing a foundation for a shared vision of what is required that all might participate in the benefits of our newly emerging economy.
Sources to be examined:
- Relevant modern papal social encyclicals beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum up to Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus (100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum).
- Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good; True Humanism; Man and the State.
- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice.
- Michael Sandal, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy.
- Yves R. Simon, The Tradition of Natural Law.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, II, Q. 21, 72, 90 and 91.