WWJD With His MBA?

Bill Fotsch
Jun 20, 2025
8 min read

Updated: Aug 19, 2025

This essay was originally published under the title "If Christ ran a business, would you invest? The Bible and Harvard Business School Research says it would be wise to do so." As these experts show, we have much to learn from integrating faith and research; but with results like double a company's profitable growth, let's get started!

Have you ever given serious thought to how Christ would run a business? We have. Seriously, we have.

Matthew 6:33 reminds us that “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.” No doubt a business run by Christ would be an amazing business. A prior blog post of ours, Is God a Capitalist, said, “God cares greatly, and equally, about wealth creation and wealth distribution. … [I]n other words, God unites the production of wealth with its broad deployment for blessing…."

Our faith, our research and our experience has us saying, “We agree.” In fact, we want to show that uniting the production of wealth with broad distribution enhances both. We would like to share with you the specifics of why we say this.

While we, the authors, have very different backgrounds, we have three things very much in common:

First and foremost, our Christian faith, which is foundational for both of us,
An engineering background that has both of us continually interested in how things work, and
An interest in research to translate beliefs into practice.

We’ve been blessed in many ways, and we know from Luke 12:48 that “to whom much is given, much will be required.” The Lord endows us with blessings for our own enjoyment, as well as those of others. Moreover, the Parable of the Talents underscores that what Jesus cares about is our obedience to His command to “go out and multiply.”

Our version of “go out and multiply” is to work with businesses to improve company results AND improve the lives of the employees that drive those results. We think this is very much how Christ would run a business, for the good of all: customers, employees, owners, and consequently the greater community.

That objective and our shared faith is what brought us together. One of us (Bill) has been involved in business coaching for over 30 years. While the bulk of companies have been secular, whenever we display the love of God and Fruits of the Spirit, we are bringing glory to God (Colossians 3:23). Throughout the process of this business coaching, we’ve engaged all employees and aimed to help them fulfill their purpose–in the company and beyond–and it became clear that purpose-driven work was an integral determinant of financial performance for the company as well.

Outlined in Bill’s book, “Partners on the Payroll,” nearly 400 companies later, success stories abounded:

Feuerborn Engineering: Revenue up 300 percent and profits up 400 percent cumulative in seven years across the entire company, with no layoffs ever.
Southwest Airlines: "Plane Smart Business" economic engagement initiative with Orlando Pilots generated $2 million in fuel and productivity savings in six months.
Boardman Fabrication: After applying economic engagement principles, sales grew by 55 percent in the first year, and profits were more than the past three years combined across the entire company.
Adams Beasley Associates: In the first year of economic engagement implementation, sales doubled, and profits grew even faster, with no layoffs ever.

From our coaching work, we came to understand that Economic Engagement provides the managerial insights that brings glory to God because of the joy that’s added to the lives of employees, customers, and investors. Both the creation of wealth and the distribution of wealth are enhanced, much as we envision Christ might run a company. We sought to define Economic Engagement principles more precisely, documenting what we had been learning:

Customer engagement is the starting point, since customers define value, and thus the economics of any business. Didn’t Christ call us to serve others? This is what makes serving customers a noble cause. It also provides a foundation for our ongoing improvement in how to serve customers as technology and other trends evolve.
Economic understanding aligns all employees in a common understanding of what defines success for the company. Didn’t Christ bring the Law to perfection by telling us to love one another? This unites us in a common cause, as does the clear understanding of the economics of any business, empowering everyone to make good decisions.
Economic transparency enables all employees to see how the company is doing and learn from successes and failures. Didn’t Christ say, “A slave does not know what his master is about, but I call you friends, because I have told you everything”? This loose translation shows the power of transparency, which enables everyone to learn from successes and failures.
Economic compensation gives all employees a shared stake in the results, making them economic partners in the company. From Proverbs: “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” Everyone in the company has a stake in being diligent, which increases prosperity by better serving others. This shared compensation was also the theme in the blog article “Oxen and Employees.”
Employee participation leads to lower turnover and better relationships between owners/managers and employees. We are all one body. If we are to bring His kingdom to earth, we must be His hands, His arms, His feet, His ears, His eyes, His mind, and His Heart. We do this in a business by having all employees participate as partners.

With the help of Professor Dennis Campbell and his research associate Iuliana Mogosanu, we developed a research instrument to test the hypothesis that economic engagement, (running a business as we would envision Christ might), improved business performance short term and long term. We created a survey instrument based on our decades of working with companies. This survey was designed to measure the level of economic engagement at a company.

We first used this survey in collaboration with the Filene Research Institute, an association of hundreds of credit unions that Professor Campbell knew had an interest, albeit a secular interest. 140 credit unions participated in the research. The results are shown below:

We were astonished at how dramatic the contrast was between companies that were low in Economic Engagement and those with high Economic Engagement; that is, managed as we would envision Christ would: higher profitability, faster growth, and lower risk. But we had only tested this with credit unions. We needed to go to more industries to see if the same powerful results showed up. In a way, we were both testing our emerging faith and spreading the gospel.

To date, we have conducted 10 waves of research with roughly 50 to 150 companies per wave. Since we did not have the detailed financials the credit unions had, we asked for companies to submit financial growth over a three-year period. We were surprised, both at how consistent the results were, wave after wave, and how dramatic the difference in profitability was. We were reminded of Proverbs 22:4, "The reward for humility and fear of the LORD is riches and honor and life."

Our research as outlined in this early Inc.com article shows that opportunity for most companies is to double their profitable growth. This was reinforced by our research on employee engagement, corporate culture, and firm performance, finding that these correlations are robust even after controlling for differences across companies (e.g., number of employees and size). The results of six of the ten waves of research follow:

The link between economic engagement and growth in short-run profit is robust. It seems clear that running a business in a Christian way is much more profitable. A company applying economic engagement/Christian principles would be in the top quartile and substantially more profitable than peers. Our faith would suggest this, but the years of research confirms this. But what about the long term? We started gathering data on companies that had outstanding results for over three decades. While we are continuing this longitudinal research as we are doing with the horizontal research, below is a list of companies we’ve already gathered data on:

Connor Group (apartment management)
Trinity Manufacturing (metal fabrication)
Universal Engineering (environmental testing)
Southwest Airlines (transportation)
Costco (retail/wholesale)
Hillenmeyer Landscape (you guessed it, landscaping)
Kriegel Holdings Inc (machined products)
MSA (engineering services)
Canlis (food service)
Studio Moderna (Eastern European Retailer)

Each of these companies, large, midcap, and small, have led their respective industries in performance for over 30 years. Each of them has their own story. Frankly, it has been a privilege collaborating with them. They tend not to be pontificating about their Christian principles, but their actions speak volumes. We are reminded of Samuel 2:3, “Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.”

What was striking was their Economic Engagement/Christian principles score. Remember, we had selected these companies just based on industry leading business performance over at least 30 years. What you can see from the table below is that as a group, they are on the high end of Economic Engagement performance, not only overall, but on all five drivers. God blesses companies when they run consistent with His principles, both short term and long term. If you don’t believe this based on faith, the research is compelling.

So superior longer-term performance also correlates to strong Economic Engagement/Christian principles.

There is always more to learn, but what we can say for sure is that, just as the Lord has given us guidance and wisdom over how to live our lives individually and collectively, there are principles that also hold at an organizational level to bring fruitfulness for everyone involved.

Business is a powerful force for good when the gifts are stewarded properly. We are particularly eager to build our research capabilities so that the success stories can be told and explained, including to a secular world that is attracted to the light but doesn’t always understand it.

So we invite you to collaborate with us in one or more the following:

If you are investing in a particular industry, you might encourage them to offer our next wave of Economic Engagement research to their members. We would customize the survey to their industry, as we have done with other industries.
Suggest a company you know that has had outstanding result over more than 30 years that could add to our longitudinal research. Suggestions should go to info@EconomicEngagement.com
If you have any specific questions or suggestions, please forward them to info@EconomicEngagement.com

Thanks for taking the time to read through this article. Please consider how you might act on it in some truly Christian way. As we have seen, we think you will find true prosperity by being aligned with how Christ might run a business.

Our vision is to benefit society by transforming capitalism's current core ethic of 'maximize shareholder value' to the better core ethic of 'optimize mutual value.' We achieve our vision by impacting learning, opinion, beliefs, and policy. -Institute for Better Capitalism, Inc.

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