Class is in session!

After a lot of work, and with a lot of help from colleagues at De La Salle Professional Schools (DLS-PSI) Graduate School of Business, notably from:

Nenette Barrios, chair of the human resource management department, who supported the elective's approval at the department level, and
Tristan Macapanpan, vice-dean of the Ortigas campus, who volunteered to host the elective class;

the Faith-based Management elective class is off the ground. Hurray!

The class meets every Tuesday, 6:00 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. at the Ortigas campus of DLS-PSI Graduate School of Business.

Of course, there were key suppliers who acted as unwitting and "silent partners" of this educational enterprise. There was Notre Dame University Press, publisher of Managing as if Faith Mattered by Alford and Naughton. Unfortunately, NDUP ran out of stock of the book and we had to resort to photcopying for this first batch. They assure us of a new printing, though.

There is the Vine and Branches bookstore at Sta. Lucia who was my only source of The Soul of the Firm by William Pollard. I called OMF which is the publisher of the book and they're also out of stock!

And of course, there's Claretian Publications, which publishes that wonderful little volume Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret by De Berri and Hug. The book makes it easy to get an overview of more than 100 years of Catholic social teaching in one afternoon. I love the summaries!

Of course, organizing this course would have been easier if the main book publishers publish such books also. Paging Pearson, Addison-Wesley, McGraw-Hill, Thomson, etc.!

I wrote a Managing for Society column on the occasion of the first day of class.

The first group of MBA students in the elective is a wonderful bunch and I'm sure I'll have a great time knowing and learning from them as the term progresses. They're all interested in how faith can lead them to become better managers and/or to be closer to their calling. E, for example, is a hospital and school owner and manager who wants the institutions she manages to be of better service to society. C is a bank branch manager who wants to better understand how to help those whom she supervises to integrate their spiritual life with their work life in the bank. I'm inspired by such commitments. I would be privileged to work under such managers. In fact, I have requested E if we can have one class session in her school or hospital.

As an unexpected but welcome bonus, we have P, a French exchange student, enrolling in the class. It's an interesting coincidence that on this maiden offering of the class, we have a French woman present, when it was the French priest John Baptiste de La Salle who made the original commitment to form the Brothers of the Christian Schools to address the needs of the poor through education! St. La Salle is now the Patron Saint of Catholic Teachers.

Another interesting French connection: I found out while doing the research for this class that the French entrepreneur-industrialist Leon Harmel was a pioneer (1870 to 1914) in promoting Christian industrial models. Let me quote from the book about him: "Harmel’s model factory at Val-des-Bois demonstrated that mutual accord and respect were possible between labor and management. Harmel turned his profitable spinning mill into a Christian corporation. His ethical business practices captured the attention of Pope Leo XIII and inspired his encyclical "Rerum Novarum." Harmel also encouraged his workers to make pilgrimages to Rome. The collaboration of Pope Leo XIII and Léon Harmel laid the foundation of enterprises that collectively became known as the movement of Christian democracy." Vive la France!

For those who still doubt that Christian social tradition applies to the "real world" of business, it's noteworthy that it was a practicing businessman like Harmel who inspired Pope Leo XIII to address the plight of workers in Rerum Novarum, thus, starting a string of papal writings on social justice culminating with Centessimus Annus. The teachings ARE based on reality!

I'm getting a lot of help in the class, through her encouraging presence and eager participation, from my colleague Mabel Gaite, who is the coordinator of DLS-PSI's Center for Social Responsibility and Human Development and also the Campus Minister. Mabel has been an unwitting collegial guardian angel (and expert resource on faith-related teachings) in my effort to integrate my faith into my work as a management educator. Thank you, Mabel!

So the class journey begins.