A spark from business leaders can illuminate the meaning of ‘purpose’

In 2011, with the global economy still recovering from the nadir of the post-financial-crisis economic funk, the pop song “We Are Young” won a Grammy award. The lyrics, inspired by a night of excess, exude reckless confidence in the seemingly unbounded energy of youth.

Over the last several years, no small amount of literature has been published on the shifting priorities of young workers. No longer satisfied with competitive compensation or the opportunity to cultivate skills in order to develop a career, recent graduates aspire to work as part of an enterprise devoted to a purpose broader than business success alone. The interest millennials have in companies dedicated to social change is one of the features that accounts for the growing popularity of ESG (environmental, social, and governance issues) among global investment managers. Business luminaries like BlackRock’s Larry Fink, the CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, predict that the importance of social purpose will only grow as millennials and even younger generations occupy influential positions in the commercial world.
 
Linking purpose to profit is hardly a novel idea. Two popes of the recent past expressed the theme in papal encyclicals. Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate (2009) explicitly called for greater social responsibility on the part of business. His predecessor taught that while profit was one measure of success, it was not the only one. In Centesimus Annus (1991), Pope St. John Paul II stated that other human and moral factors are at least as equally important for the life of a business enterprise. In Laudato Si (2015), Pope Francis too stresses the need for businesses to more accurately assess and account for the social costs and contributions associated with their activities.

Leveraging an entire business and all its relationships to remedy social causes is beyond any single enterprise, even one the size of BlackRock. There are, however, lessons learned in the course of a career that unexpectedly turn into Gospel-style teachable moments. A task of a Christian business leader is to recall and share them.
 
In the foreword to the updated version of Vocation of the Business Leader, a joint work of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas, Cardinal Peter Turkson writes that the Church’s business leaders must “keep burning the light of faith that fuels their daily pursuit of the good.” That light gives sight to others. The Church needs her business leaders to identify and popularize concrete ways of exercising purposefulness inside the commercial sphere.
 
While there may be no one blueprint for a profitable, socially responsible business within a Catholic framework, examples do exist. Some lessons can be drawn from the work of Chiara Lubich, whose cause for canonization opened in 2019. In 1991, the same year Rome issued Centesimus Annus, Lubich made the Economy of Communion (EoC) part of her global Focalare movement. While the concrete manifestations of these efforts vary, EoC businesses aim to place economic activity at the service of spiritual and socially beneficial goals.

In the 2011 global hit, although the song’s chorus expresses optimism and confidence, its short-term focus was rather unambitious. While the young vocalists knew they could “set the night on fire,” their more immediate concern was finding someone to merely carry them home. 

“Purpose” can light a fire, but it will need stable light to give direction. Purposeful paths forward can be all the more clear when illuminated by spiritual light. The Church’s business leaders should join the debate about the meaning of purpose and provide a spark.

FATHER THOMAS MORE GARRETT, O.P., is a Dominican friar at Providence College in Rhode Island, where he is a member of the management faculty in the School of Business and serves as associate vice president and associate general counsel.