Report on ‘Wholeness at Work’ Conference
Ridley Hall, Cambridge, 11-13 April 2008 – Abridged Version

Lili and José Iparraguirre attended the ‘Wholeness at Work’ conference held at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, between 11-13 April 2008. This report briefly presents the notes taken during the talks and discussions.

I - The Conference
The ‘Faith in Business’ group at Ridley Hall has been organising annual conferences on topics relating Christianity and work for over 18 years. Amongst the participants there were consultants, industrial chaplains, university lecturers, and Anglican ordinands and ministers.

1. First Session - Integrity
The Director of Faith in Business, Richard Higginson, opened the Conference in prayer and also delivered the opening talk on personal integration and integrity, which looked at the concept of personal ‘wholeness’. Richard emphasised the importance of ‘Hesed’ – God’s steadfast love (Ps. 26)- as the greatest model of consistency. Psalm 26 tells of hating the company of evil and walking towards wholeness. He introduced the distinction between values and virtues –all organisations present value statements but hardly ever mention they stand up for virtues. Values refer to preferences and priorities whereas virtues are more personal and more objective at the same time. Integrity / wholeness, as a virtue refers to a continuous commitment never to be compromised. The main components of integrity are honesty, transparency, openness and consistency –and self-criticism. Richard listed the following healthy attitudes towards a culture of wholeness:

Higginson stated that as margins out of cost advantage are diminishing so drastically, profits depend more on quality than quantity, and quality depends more on relationships than efficiency and targets.

2.- Second Session – Emerging generation
Brian Draper, lecturer in Contemporary Culture at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, described the beliefs and values of the emerging generation ‘Y’ –i.e. people in their 20s and 30s-, how they impact on organisations and how wholeness can breach the gap across generational boundaries. His main contention was that the thirst for integrity and the shared values the generation ‘Y’ would be bringing into the corporate world are forces which make for wholeness and that as Christians we should go beyond a culture of tolerance of diversity into a culture of celebration of diversity.

3.- Third Session - Globalisation
Jyoti Banerjee, IT consultant and director of an investment fund that supports ‘Kingdom businesses’, discussed whether globalisation –which has lowered transaction costs so much so that we live in a ‘flat’ world- could be also understood as a force shaping ‘wholeness’ in organisations across geographic and cultural boundaries. Jyoti identified pro-poor policies that enable growth at the same time as one of the most pressing challenges faced by Christians in business and government. Jyoti finished with a very insightful thought: the Biblical model for engaging in a globalised world is given in Ps 24:1 “the Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” and John 1:14: ‘grace and truth’; balancing both is challenging for it is easy for us Christians to act gracefully disregarding the truth and also bashing people with the Truth whilst forgetting to act with Grace. The speaker emphasised that business is a great opportunity to create healthier communities and that corporate social responsibility is at the core of this process because it includes social venturing, working in communities through local churches, mentoring and supporting international groups, caring for the poor and the planet, and responsible consumption.

4. Fourth Session – Unwhole organisations
The two next speakers dwelled on wholeness in corporations. Tim Harle, a ‘business ecologist’ working at the interface of business and faith communities, presented some figures about ‘unwholeness’ at work (e.g. 58% of UK workers say they have changed their personality to fit into work) and suggested that excessive specialisation and lack of control would be at the centre of this problem. Tim identified the following elements of a healthy (i.e. wholesome) system which could revert this situation: consistency in words and deeds, alignment, systemic dialogue, critical mass, exploratory discomfort. He emphasised that as Christianity is a relational belief, our faith is germane to making organisations whole. He encouraged us to learn from nature and its ‘near misses’, connections, cycles of growth and decay, and feedback and feed-forward effects and apply its lessons to promote change in organisations. Finally, he developed the metaphors of a prairie and a rainforest. The prairie is neatly managed, has clearly defined boundaries, and is subject to a great degree of control. In contrast, a rainforest is a fuzzy entity, with several things simultaneously going on in apparent chaos, unpredictably and continuously re-creating itself. Tim argued that organisations should be seen more as rainforests than prairies; their processes and operations are not transformed by carefully managed interventions but by self-organisation processes and the uncontrolled emergence of a new culture.

Alastair Mitchel-Baker, director of a consultancy firm whose working model is based on the Holy Trinity, focused on this model and some of its implications and uses in organisations. Alastair then presented he metaphor of a bicycle (which can be disassembled into its component parts and assembled back again into a working unit) and a frog (which, obviously, cannot) and put forward the assertion that organisations are more like frogs. Hence, the Trinity-based model composed of strategy, systems and culture defining the identity of an organisation (with analogies in Romans 1:8 and Genesis 1:28). His main point is that if we can see the Trinity in organisations, we see their wholeness.

5. Fifth Session – Transforming Business
Peter Heslam, director of the Capitalism project at the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity and lecturer at Ridley Hall, gave a presentation on transforming business. Peter presented a model of business as promoter of social capital understood as institutional, relational, moral and spiritual capital: these four types of capital would move outwards from business organisations and into the rest of society reducing poverty levels and transforming social structures. Businesses can create institutional capital by reducing corruption and promoting political freedom. Relational breakdown can be reverted by businesses, for economic activities are based on relationships and trust (as John Paul II put it, ‘Peace is Development’). The business world is tainted with greed, but economic growth and moral growth go hand-in-hand; capitalism is not morally empty but is closely related to ‘shalom’, which encompasses relations. Along these lines, as Christians involved in business we must generate new thinking to produce good behaviour. Peter pointed out that UK has a long tradition of businesses set up by Christians: Unilever, Barclays, Boots, Thomas Cook, WH Smith, etc.

6.- Closing Session
Richard Higginson closed the conference with a reflection on 1 Cor 16:13-14: “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. Do everything in love.”. We cannot do the first four things without doing them in love, and pretend to be good witnesses.

After each talk, time was allowed for questions and open discussion, and participants broke into small groups to work through points prepared beforehand by the different speakers.

Individual spiritual guidance was available from Ridley Hall’s Chaplain, Dr Jane Keiller, and we had plenty of time to engage with the rest of participants, and the speakers.

The closing time of worship including Holy Supper was the crowning moment of a spiritually refreshing and intellectually challenging conference.

Grace be with us all.

José and Lili Iparraguirre
Belfast, 27 April 2008