Monthly Archives: January 2016

0 Theonomics

Over the last couple of Fridays I have reviewed “Theonomics: Reconnecting Economics with Virtue and Integrity”, edited by Andrew Lightbown and Peter Sills.

Two weeks ago, I questioned a phrase quoted from Pope Leo that calls the nature of common ownership into question.  Last week, I looked in-depth at the contribution St Benedict offers to our understanding of community.

This is not an easy book to review. The problem is not so much particular chapters, some are interesting and challenging but the idea there is such a thing as theonomics.

Christians and Usury

Some time during the late middle ages, the Christian faith abandoned its condemnation of usury.  Presumably this was around the time capitalism became the dominant economic model.  I suspect from this point the Christian faith could no longer lay claim to a distinctive position on the economy.

Islam still maintains the ban on usury. It has developed approaches to funding businesses and financial institutions that do not involve charging interest.

At the time Christianity abandoned usury, early capitalism offered a radical departure. It promised to enrich all by allowing ordinary people to become wealthy and not concentrate wealth in the hands of the aristocracy.  Despite the religious divisions of the time (several centuries!), the churches completely adopted capitalism. Only a few sects distance themselves from the economy, eg the Amish.

It is hard to adopt a radical stance to the economy, when you have a stake in an inherently unfair system.  This is not in any way to devalue the ideas in the book but it is to question the value of labelling it as theonomics.  Most of the values in the book can be found elsewhere.

Virtue

Perhaps one of the most searching ideas in the book is that of Virtue.  The book contrasts virtue with values.  Everyone in business is aware of values.  They are self-selected values and standards that we claim shape our work.  They can be chosen as self-serving attributes for a business or organisation.  So, you may genuinely believe in your commitment to honesty in your dealings but in practice are you?

Virtue is an external quality we are born with and it enables us to live a virtuous life.

“Virtue is the agent of inner change and growth, and the pursuit of virtue gives us a moral strength to live by higher qualities and standards than those that simply serve our self-interest.” (Page 70)

The idea of virtue relates to Benedict’s teaching in a monastic context. The point of the monastic community is to develop people not so much for their skills as their character.  The point is of course bad faith governs economics today.

Capitalism in Good Faith

Does this mean capitalism is always bad faith economics?  It depends on which alternatives you count as capitalism.  Mostly alternatives to mainstream capitalism are reforms of capitalism, not really alternatives to it.  Capitalism in good faith is possible although an economic system governed by good faith would be nothing like the system we have now or indeed many of the so-called alternatives we have seen.

Whilst welcome, the book’s insights raise the question whether most churches have surrendered virtue to the prevailing economic system.  When the banks are able to survive the 2008 financial crisis at the expense of just about everyone, when financial decisions made every day take wealth out of the economy, concentrating it in the hands of barely 1% of the world’s population and at the same time banks will not make loans to poor people on the specious grounds that they are unable to repay them; whither virtue, character or integrity?

You don’t need to be a Christian to see there is something seriously wrong in a society that allows this to happen.  Some of the most effective approaches to tackling poverty through alternative financial systems have in fact originated in Islam and I shall return to this in a few weeks time.

Christians can and do make a positive contribution to the economy, challenging its excesses and devising alternative economic systems.  But it’s a long time since it was possible to claim a single view from the Christian faith.

Still this book is a significant attempt to find some common ground and if it fails to convince, I would not want stop the search.  You never know what might be uncovered in the next book!

Do you believe faith contributes significantly to economic debate?  What roles do people of faith have in economic systems?

0 Local Associations and the Power They Exercise

I’m drawing on my experience as a community development worker to consider ABCD’s six categories of community assets, and the second is local associations. You can find the full list towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?

I note that ABCD adds to local associations “and the power they exercise”. It is easy to experience the power local associations exercise as a liability. So, I’ll start with what can go wrong and go on to explain how their power can be an asset.

Where Does Their Power Come From?

Associations are essentially powerful and the power they exercise is through human minds. The Old and New Testaments identify this power as spiritual power. Angels and demons are not, as most people seem to think, independent beings living in some spiritual realm. They are manifestations of human organisations.

A healthy organisation has a healthy angel and an unhealthy organisation has an unhealthy angel or demon. If you are interested in exploring this further, try Walter Wink’s trilogy of books about the Powers.

The ancients understood the power of organisations in the sense that they empower or possess their members. A healthy organisation strengthens its members and enhances their lives but an unhealthy organisation can be demonic.

How Do Things Go Wrong?

I have seen this many times where the original aims of the organisation are a given and its members cannot see the reality they are in. They genuinely believe they are working for the ends they started with but they no longer know the truth of their activities. When challenged their response will be aggressive, because reality has to be kept at bay to maintain their vision.

Churches are prone to this and if you believe God is on your side, it is immensely difficult to jettison that delusion. To do so is, it seems, to stop believing in God; it is atheism. Atheism of course has its own demons. Not believing in them doesn’t mean they go away!

OK angels and demons may not be your cup of tea (they’re not really mine) but it is helpful to understand what they were before Medieval theologians and Hammer’s House of Horror got hold of them.

So, associations lose power through

Mostly organisations that lose power in these ways become unable to do anything significant. I’m sure much of the violence we see is such unhealthy activity of nations or organisations.

What Does  a Healthy Association Look Like?

0 Availability

Availability is another aspect of timing for offers of products services or causes. For services, availability is closely related to capacity. The issue is not the best time to launch or promote an offer. It is periods when we can’t take on more clients (and so disappoint them) or have too few.

Work may be seasonal. A coaching service may find work slackens off at Christmas and during the summer holidays. A hairdresser on the other hand may find these are periods when there is more work.

Whilst you can anticipate times of year when work increases or decreases, be prepared to be surprised! Is a sudden fall in sales seasonal or an issue such as adverse publicity?

How to Respond to Times When Work is Scarce or Plentiful

A fall in sales may be an opportunity to make a special offer. If you have spare capacity, it may be better to sell it at a reduced price than to do nothing. If the spare capacity includes paid staff, this will be more important.

Address oversubscribed services with increased capacity. Self-employed people offering specialist services may need to find some way to spread customers over the year. However, if too much work is a serious issue then  maybe the shape of the business needs attention.  Increasing staff is only one option.  Sometimes you can change the way you deliver a service to cut time commitment. For example a one-to-one service might be delivered to groups.

There is one remedy many businesses overlook when tackling over-subscriptions.  That is increasing prices.  Higher prices will result in fewer customers (keep increasing them until the numbers drop to something you can manage) and possibly more income.  With fewer customers, you may be able to increase the time available for each customer and so the value of your offer will increase.

Whilst these may not be pressing issues for you, it is worth having a few ideas in advance to carry out should need arise.

This is part of a post sequence about the circuit questionnaire’s second element, products services and causes.

0 St Benedict in the Marketplace

About ten years ago, BBC2 broadcasted a short series called the ‘The Monastery’.  Six men lived in a monastery for a month, adopting the same discipline as the monks.  The monastery was Worth Abbey and the Abbot Father Christopher Jamieson (I believe he still is).  The programmes had quite an impact at the time and Jamieson said many business people contacted him seeking spiritual guidance.  Not all of them were Christians and many had not previously heard of St Benedict, who first wrote the rule that governs Worth Abbey many centuries ago.

There have been other similar programmes since and Jamieson published a book, Finding Sanctuary.  It had a secular imprint because Jamieson wrote it for everyone, not just believers.  It sold out during the first week of publication.  I think that was in 2006, the edition available from Amazon is dated 2008.  (I’ve pasted in a link to the book, in case you’re interested but I am not reviewing the book in this post.)

I am returning to Theonomics, the book I started to review last Friday, when I commented on one short passage from the book.  Today, I shall review one chapter from the book and next week finish by reviewing the whole book.

Chapter 3 on page 37 is “A Framework for Flourishing” by Alan Hargrave.  This chapter is about the Rule of St Benedict and its relevance to business.

Think about religious communities as models of ideal communities.  They are not ideal communities, far from it but places where their members make a conscious effort to live in community.  Benedictine communities follow a rule developed by St Benedict where the community members make three vows.  These vows are not poverty chastity and obedience but obedience stability and transformation (Conversatio Morum).

Here is my take on these three vows; we can all consider them when building local marketplaces.

Obedience

Obedience is not what you might think.  The Latin root of the word means to listen.  The obedient person pays attention and acts accordingly or appropriately.  So, the opposite of obedience is not disobedience but absurdity, acting without reason.

There are those who cannot read the signs of the times and so act inappropriately, not even in their own long-term interests.  Climate change deniers spring to mind.  It seems no evidence will convince them.

I recently wrote a post about Prayer in the Marketplace, wherein I suggested prayer is paying attention.  Obedience is not doing what you’re told but paying attention and acting appropriately.

Stability

It’s where your feet are.  That is the important thing to remember.  This vow is about choosing a neighbourhood and commiting to it.  Your chosen neighbourhood is not better than anywhere else because all places are worth  commitment from those who live there.

Our neighbourhoods are desperate for people who commit to them on the behalf of others, who seek sustainable approaches to the issues of their chosen places.  Community depends upon incarnation, the real presence of those who live there.

Transformation

Scholars tell us Conversatio Morum is difficult to translate.  A close literal meaning is conversion of life but as such it implies an individualistic focus on self-improvement.

Perhaps it is better thought of as a commitment to conversion of life in general, for everyone.  The important thing is an opportunity for everyone to meet their potential;  removal of constraints on human development, such as poverty.

The Radical Agora, marketplaces at the heart of revitalised neighbourhoods, places where community happens, is one way of visualising how conversion of neighbourhood life might look.

The point is the Radical Agora cannot happen if this vision of transformation is all we have.  We need obedience and stability too.

Do you think Benedict speaks to our communities today?  If you have a view, please share it in the comments.

0 Local Residents’ Skills

These posts draw on my experience of community development to consider six categories of community assets. This first starts with local residents’ skills. You can find the categories listed towards the end of my post, What Are Community Assets?

Skills Audits

Local residents’ skills might be the most obvious source of community assets, after buildings and equipment. They are in some ways harder to identify, let alone quantify. Here are some reasons for this:

Skills audits are an unmitigated pain. A pain for those who complete the skills audit form and even more of a pain for those who must analyse and make sense of the answers.

Usually you select skills from a long list, based on the needs of some other group of people. You stare at a sea of tick boxes and find you can find hardly any that you can do. You imagine that everyone else is ticking scores of boxes and you are the only person totally lacking these skills.  (The omnicompetent can happily tick all the boxes in certain knowledge they’ll never hear about the form again!)

Furthermore some organisation selects the tick boxes, presumably based on what they think they need, as if skills are somehow independent of the person who owns them. But someone may understand double entry bookkeeping but be unable to add columns of figures or use a spreadsheet; or they might be dishonest and not safe around cash.

Tasks Not Skills

There is a better way. Stop thinking about skills and start to think about the tasks. If you ask someone to do a job, you’re asking a human being with a history and their own specific take on the task at hand. What actually needs doing and who can do it? People who know the tasks that need to be done can offer to have a go.  And of course, and perhaps even better, you can approach people who wouldn’t think of taking on a task and ask them to consider it.  You need a reason for choosing them but it can be inspiring to chosen for who you are and not because you ticked the right box in a skills audit.

Of course, this person may not have all the necessary knowledge, skills and qualities to complete the task. How do you acquire these without opportunities? People can learn and if they take on a task they have an incentive to learn.

Another issue is when you discover they are not doing the task properly. I can remember taking on some jobs and being drowned in masses of information about how to do the job. I couldn’t possibly take it all on board. And most of the information was about the way my predecessor did the job and not particularly necessary.  I needed to work out my approach to the task.  (Predecessors have been very helpful but it does not follow every detail of their approach will work for me.)

You see, the issue is not really about individuals’ skills so much as the way an organisation gets the best out of people.

Sloughing

There is an insight from citizens’ organising, called sloughing. The word is normally used of snakes, when they grow by removing their outermost layers of skin. The idea is that any task in an organisation is an opportunity for someone who is less experienced to grow into. So, you seek someone challenged by the task.

Once they become adept at the task, it is time to move onto another. They move onto a new challenge and vacate the role for someone else.

This may not be possible for every organisation but it is worth some reflection. If you are interested in increasing community assets then don’t look at peoples’ achievements, look at their potential. Maybe not everyone will step up to a challenge but how many skills are never discovered because no-one ever tries to find them?

0 Making Changes to Your Offer

Products services and causes change.  There are many reasons for making changes to your offer, for example:

If something sells well, it may not be urgent to change it. However it may be possible to anticipate the market and introduce a change when sales begin to dip. Anticipating changes in the market and knowing how to respond is something you increasingly understand with experience.

External and Internal Pressures

Change might be driven by internal or external pressures. External pressures drive change in your offer over which you have little control. Fashion or changing seasons might be examples.

Internal pressures are changes you undertake as your offer evolves and you learn more about the market. The market itself does not change but you identify changes that better fit your market’s needs. There may be good times to introduce these changes but overall they are not dependent on external events.

Sometimes changes have little impact on marketing. A consultancy service might change its offer but the consultant reveals the details only when making an offer. Such a service sells through reputation and not so much through the detail of its offer.

A shop selling large numbers of products might plan seasonal campaigns or occasional promotions of one product.  They may launch new products at certain times of year based on their experience of seasonal changes.

Like everything else, this is worth considering even if changes to your offer are likely to happen after long periods of time.  Everything changes and it is worth knowing when and how your offer might change, so that you prepare for when changes need to happen.

This is part of a post sequence about the second element of the circuit questionnaire, products services and causes.

2 What is Common Ownership?

My grandparents’ generation understood common ownership.  Even in the early 2000s, they would proudly quote their membership number when you mentioned the co-op.

It is only in relatively recent times that membership of the co-op has come to mean very little.  In days when every supermarket has a loyalty card, the co-op divi makes little difference and can be worse as in recent years there’s been no dividend.

At one time the divi made a real difference to the household budget.  And shopping at the co-op guaranteed low prices and good quality.  All of these were benefits of common ownership.

Theonomics

The reason I’m raising this issue is the book I shall review over the next few Fridays.  “Theonomics: Reconnecting Economics with Virtue and Integrity”, edited by Andrew Lightbown and Peter Sills contains essays about economics by Christian practitioners.  The papers vary in quality but it is a helpful snapshot of the thinking going on in the churches.

I’ll take a look at the more inspirational papers next time but this time, I want to respond to this passage from Peter Sills’ paper “A Christian Framework for Economics”.  He quotes Pope Leo’s concerns for poverty in the capitalist system and then we find this passage:

“Pope Leo’s social concern is an expression of the divine concern for the poor rather than a political manifesto, and he was equally critical of socialism, particularly its advocacy of common ownership which he saw as destroying the natural right of property.”  (Page 22) (Rerum Novarum, Leo’s encyclical,  published in 1891.)

I’m not particularly concerned about defending socialism, a somewhat varied collection of beliefs.  To praise or condemn socialism, it is usually helpful to explain which particular version of socialism you are praising or condemning.

Neither do I praise or condemn the “natural right of property”.  People do own property and I’m not aware of any political system that does not endorse a right to private ownership of property unless it uses totalitarian methods to enforce some alternative.

State Ownership

Pope Leo was writing long before the Soviet Union and so it is difficult to know exactly what he meant.  In the twentieth century we saw several experiments forcing populations to give up private property in favour of “common ownership”.  But what we saw was not common ownership but state ownership.

I am in favour of state ownership where it is appropriate.  The state must own the NHS, for example,  to deliver free health services to the population.  Paying for the NHS through taxation is the best method we have been able to find.  It is hard to imagine any advantages to moving the NHS into common ownership.

Common Ownership and Private Enterprise

The point is different activities need to be supported appropriately.  Common ownership is not the same as state ownership.  Common ownership is where customers or workers own an enterprise.  So, for example, John Lewis’ workers own the company.  Those workers also own their own property.  When they receive a dividend from the business it is theirs to spend as they wish.  Whilst I’m sure this approach is consistent with some versions of socialism, it does not follow that all those employed by John Lewis are socialists!

Common ownership is an approach to economics embedded in a system where everyone owns private property.  In a system that optimised common ownership (this would mean common ownership of most established businesses) there would still be some state ownership, eg the NHS, and there would still be private ownership.

Every household would own property, some financed through common ownership.  But more important there would still be private businesses.  And the place where they would be found is locally!  Small businesses, privately owned are an efficient way of testing new ideas.  There is work and expense in  setting up common ownership and for a lot of new businesses, it is more economically efficient to test a new business at its owners’ risk.

The time to decide to create a co-operative or social enterprise, or use any other beneficial business model, is once you have a business.  These days successful businesses are usually incorporated.  It would be good to see more proven businesses exploring alternative pathways with elements of common ownership.

The Common Good?

Pope Leo went on to say:

“develop the idea of the ‘common good’ as a positive duty ‘to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth shall be such as to produce of themselves public well-being and private prosperity.”  (page 22)

Sills goes on to show how the Catholic Church developed these ideas during the twentieth century.  My question for Pope Leo is: how does he intend to deliver on his light-weight concept of the common good without common ownership?

Common ownership is the road less travelled.  It is rarely advocated by politicians or theologians even though it offers “public well-being and private prosperity”.

9 What Are Community Assets?

Community organisations view ownership of community assets as something of the Holy Grail of community development, although in practice they can be something of a mixed blessing.

Of course, I need to define what I mean by assets. Usually when we talk about community assets, we mean buildings. On reflection people may add a few other things such as a mini-bus or play equipment but normally assets mean buildings.

Asset or Liability?

I want to challenge this view in two ways. The first is perhaps more superficial but still important. Assets can be liabilities. Anything that requires investment of time money or passion can become a liability. It can be a drain on resources. For all the effort invested it is possible you won’t see the benefit you expect.

From my experience I can think of examples of buildings that have worked for communities and buildings that have not. I have seen buildings divide a community as local people wrestled for control. I can think of several examples, to the extent I would argue this conflict is the most common outcome for a community that owns a building.

Perhaps this most likely happens with buildings controlled by weak organisations, where two or more factions lay claim to them. Organisations established for the benefit of the community but at the same time independent of the community, perhaps fare better. Their building belongs to them and not to the community.

Two Examples

Perhaps an example of a building I was involved with some years ago, where the organisation is strong enough to withstand these power games is The Wesley Centre in Maltby. I haven’t been in touch with them for some time and so don’t know their recent history. However, this looks like a thriving community centre, supported by rental income from small businesses.

An example of assets that did not work out for a community is Burngreave New Deal for Communities. I’ve written about this at some length because the lessons are important. £50 million invested in a community that is now worse off than similar neighbourhoods in the same city that did not receive the same investment. One of its slogans was “legacy not history” and the idea was that income from the assets would fund community development in the future. The City Council owns the assets now and nothing finds its way to the community. (I don’t blame the City Council for this. They had to take on the assets and have had to close other buildings in the area to keep the New Deal buildings going. If they sell the New Deal buildings the money has to be returned to national government.)

So, I’ve offered two examples from my experience, with very different outcomes. It is easy to see buildings can be liabilities as well as assets. Loads of well-managed organisations own buildings and many buildings offer benefits to local residents. The point is they are not guaranteed to be an asset and can just as easily become a liability.

What are Community Assets?

There is a deeper argument against viewing buildings as assets. What do we mean by assets? Too often we set off asking the wrong questions. Buildings can be an asset in the technical sense of bringing value to its owners and they can be an asset to the wider population if they bring a perceived benefit into an area.

However, buildings and other equipment are not the only types of asset there are. Indeed, I would argue the assets behind a building that works are the assets that matter. It is not the monetary value of the building so much as the contribution of the organisation that manages it.

If only we could find the assets that make building ownership successful and isolate them! Maybe we would find they work as assets even without owning a building.

Six Categories of Community Asset

A few months ago, I wrote about Asset Based Community Development (ABCD). In this post I reviewed a book about ABCD which lists the assets available to communities in six categories:

Over the next few weeks I shall explore these in turn. They are part of my spirituality sequence but could equally be in the community development strand.

Why spirituality? Well as I explained in an earlier post, spirituality is essentially about paying attention. All these assets imply a commitment to a place and digging deep to discover the assets already present.

I am not very familiar with ABCD and intend to read more about it. However, I thought it would be interesting to explore these six types of asset from my experience and then perhaps compare my notes with the findings of those who practice ABCD.

So, next time I shall explore local residents’ skills.

1 Launching New Offerings

Whilst an established product service or cause will be selling, new offerings may take time to become established.

So, what happens when you introduce something new to the market? Earlier in this sequence about products services and causes, I posted about unique offers. Understand the distinction; your offer does not have to be unique to be new to the market. It always helps to identify aspects of an offer that are unique; after all why should someone buy from you if your offer copies everyone else’s?

However, this post is not about the unique aspects of an offer, so much as the timing and how you launch it on the market. If you have not marketed this particular offer before, how do you introduce it to the market?

Here are some things to consider:

Another thing to consider is whether you want to launch your offer with maximum impact so that you get a lot of immediate attention. The alternative is to slowly publicise your offer. You might want to do this so you can pilot a new offering, before you launch it on the open market.  The following approaches begin with the more gradual and move onto those with a greater immediate impact.

Whatever option you choose, there will be a lot of detail to work out, so it is worth giving thought to these issues before you introduce something new to the market.

This is part of a post sequence about the circuit questionnaire’s second element, products services and causes.