Faith-based management

It's official. I will be teaching an elective course for MBA students entitled "Faith-based Management" during the 2nd trimester of SY 2005-06. The core material will be Alford and Naughton's "Managing as if Faith Mattered." The book's title is an interesting play on Schumacher's "Economics as if People Mattered" and it's just as intriguing and enlightening.

The core premise of the course is that Christian managers must live and manage with integrity, i.e., integrate their work and their faith. This leads to interesting questions: What kind of person should a faith-filled manager be like? How should he manage the people under him? What kinds of products/services should he offer? How should he design work? And so on.

Being an elective course, it remains to be seen if students will even enroll. But it would be interesting so see how MBA students, steeped in the corporate world, will respond to the possibility of deepening their faith through their own corporate work.

One my most interesting learning in designing the course is about Reell Precision Manufacturing (RPM). This company was created by its founders (former 3M employees) on Christian principles and in so doing not only started a viable and profitable company but also showed how Christian principles can actually be applied in the hyper-practical world of modern day manufacturing.

"Reell" is a German word which means "honest, trustworthy and good". The company's espoused beliefs reflect its Christian roots which put human dignity front and center. Not surprisingly, the company won the American Business Ethics Award in 2002. Co-founder Bob Wahlstedt shares here his reflections after 30-years of leading Reell. I'm struck by the creativity Reell's management displayed during crucial moments in its history when its commitments were tested. Such creativity gave birth to management practices that deserves emulation by other companies such as teach-equip-trust and target wages.

As part of the course, the class will be researching on Philippine companies which are managed along faith principles. That should be exciting and be worth writing a book about.