A readable guide to the world's religions, how they affect commerce and why the Golden Rule seldom applies to outsiders.

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Product Description

In The Gods of Business, Todd Albertson explores the intersection of faith and the marketplace. In plain easy-to-read language, he analyzes the world's major religions - Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Secular Postmodernism, Shintoism, and Sikhism - and how these religious traditions impact business ethics and practices.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1294355 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

From the Publisher
This book is suited for a general-audience as well as for college or MBA and MDiv programs.

About the Author
Writer, speaker, and entrepreneur Dr. Todd Albertson is an expert on organizational behavior, global business practices and religious worldviews. His commonsense take on these issues derives from both his academic training and from his real world business experiences.

Dr. Albertson graduated in 1988 with a BA degree with a special focus on International Business. He earned an MBA in 1995. In 2005 he graduated with a PhD in Theology & Culture.

Dr. Albertson worked for a venture capital firm, was an evangelist for the worldwide leader in computer software and solutions, was CEO of a transportation and logistics company, and founded a new media dot com. More recently, he did relief work in Asia.

Excerpted from The Gods of Business by Todd Albertson. Copyright © 2007. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1: The Dilemma

PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460 C.E.) was the son of King Joao of Portugal. Henry organized and financed many sea expeditions. His most famous were in search of a sea route to the rich spice trade of the Indies and along the way to explore the west coast of Africa.

Prince Henry encountered much difficulty in persuading his captains to sail beyond Cape Bojador in the southern Sahara. They believed the legend that only the "Green Sea of Darkness" existed beyond this point. They thought the sun was so close to the Earth that a person's skin would turn black. The sea boiled. Ships would catch on fire. Hidden monsters lurked, waiting to smash the ships and eat their crews!

On the first attempt Henry sent his ships with orders to keep close to the coastline. A couple of weeks after they left, they returned to Portugal. Their captains told the prince they could not find a sea route to India because they had come to the "end of the world." Henry sent out thirteen more ships, and each one came back with the same story. From our armchair in history it is easy to see how askew that worldview was. It depended on prejudices that few thought about or were willing to change in the face of evidence.

The English word "worldview" comes from the German word weltanschauung, which means a "look onto the world." The term originally was used to refer to a common concept of reality shared by a particular group of people who were generally bound by culture or ethnicity. The word has been expanded over time to reflect how an individual views the world and interacts within it.

On the fourteenth voyage commissioned by Prince Henry, the ship was blown off course, and the crew could no longer see the African coastline. The captain pointed his ship's bow east and a few days later came upon Africa again, surprised that his ship had somehow bypassed the Green Sea of Darkness.

But a few years later the captain re-discovered his worst fear. He had announced a sea route to India. Now as he sailed south along the Spanish Sahara, he came to a major rock shoal. On the approach the water became shallower and shallower. Strange currents began to develop. The captain and crew were positive that the end of the world they had missed earlier was now about to destroy them.

Undoubtedly that is how they felt. The limits of their ability to discover had nothing to do with their bravery or their goodness, nor was it charted on any accurate map of the world. Rather, the limits were mapped unconsciously by what they had subjectively envisioned-their worldview.

Why is worldview important in business? Because people of faith will approach all of their endeavors with grains of objective truth. Whatever those grains may be, they are going to be washed, sieved and filtered through subjective and unconscious ways of comprehending, acting and explaining. Some grains will be overlooked, forgotten or thrown away as inconvenient. Hence, like the Portuguese sailors of Prince Henry's day, the modern businessperson's religious worldview provides a mental map of how to conduct business.

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Customer Reviews

Liberal Non-Christian Dribble
I bought this book because of the author's Evangelical Christian credentials. I was sadly disappointed. He must be a liberal Christian at best and probably not even really saved to have written this sort of non-Christian dribble. He should be ashamed calling himself a Christian!

In this book he treats all religions equally. He even uses humanistic terminology like C.E. (the abbreviation for "Common Era" which is an atheist replacement for A.D. ("After Death)." If you really are a Christian a much better reading choice would be Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics.

Don't buy this book!

Impressive
This book is impressive. It was recommend recently by a colleague. The story of religious worldview and business ethics is excellent material, and the author tells it well.

An objective look at Judaism
The Gods of Business educates the reader as to the basics of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, New Age, The Occult, Secular Humanism, and more. In today's multi-relgious environment, people are confused with what each religion holds as truth. While this book does not exhaustively cover the subject, I can say as a Rabbi that it does provides an objective look at Judaism!