In large organisations love hardly rates a mention. Mission statements highlight care, duty, responsibility and friendliness, but not love. Love is generally seen as an interrupter, combustible, something to fence in with protocols and professional standards, and for HR to monitor. When Pope Benedict XVI devoted an Encyclical to the place of love in public relationships, people were surprised. His argument is worth revisiting.
In contemporary culture public and personal spheres are sharply distinguished, and love is seen as personal. Personal relationships are the business of the individuals concerned. When brought into public life they can distort people’s reasoning and create conflicts of interest. If love turns to resentment the consequences can hurt the effectiveness and reputation of an organisation.
In some economic ideologies love is implicitly seen as subversive of organisations and society. If economic growth is the measure of personal value and the good of society, and it is achieved by individuals competing for profit, the intrusion of love can erode the individual’s stern commitment to the pursuit of wealth. Altruism has no place in organisations.
In governmental and other institutions charged with the care of people, the principal internal relationships are often seen as transactional, and so conceived in terms of justice rather than love. They focus on fairness and emphasise correctness and resolving conflicts in relationships with the people whom they serve.
In such an austere world Pope Benedict’s reflections on the place of love in public life can seem both strange and beguiling. He begins by reflecting on love within a Christian framework and moves to consider its place in public life. He identifies love with desire, which is the engine of all that we plan and do. Our loves dictate the large things that we seek, whether they be virtue, wealth, power, fame, sexual gratification or comfort, truth or goodness. Within love he identifies two movements: one is the desire to receive, and the other to give. Ideally they run together, so that when we love someone we want both them to be a gift to us, and ourselves a gift to them. Where love is identified only with receiving, our love for the other is possessive. When our desire to receive is matched by a desire to give, our love is altruistic. We see our own good as bound to others’ flourishing. Benedict explores the implications of this double sided quality of love for economic and other public relationships.
Seen from this perspective the view that individuals’ desire for profit and wealth is an adequate engine for public prosperity is shallow. Such a view incorporates love as the desire to get but neglects love as the desire to give, except perhaps to serve the self-interest of the organisation. Love between persons is relegated to Human Relations, whose role is to ensure that satisfied and focused workers will be the instruments of a profitable organisation.
'When love guides an organisation, everyone within it will be invested in its mission to people.'
This bleak understanding of public life and of organisations, of course, does not match the reality. Many businesses need to reckon with the desire of valuable workers for something more than money. They may love wealth but love family more, or desire to contribute to the community and its disadvantaged members. In their own self-interest firms may then be led to adjust working hours, promote pro bono work or sponsor migrant workers. In this way the private loves of their workers are brought into the public life of the organisation for its enrichment.
Increasingly, too, firms recognise the importance of a social license that implies a desire for the good of the whole society. They need it in order to avoid the reputational damage of too naked a self-interest. In the United States, too, though less in Australia, there has been a tradition of wealthy business people contributing to charitable causes. Although these initiatives are sometimes dismissed as reputation polishing, they do make space for love within the life of organisations and point to the costs of its exclusion.
Organisations whose work is to help people flourish have a greater need to include love in their remit. The quality of the relationships between the people who work there and those for whom they work is central to the effectiveness of schools, hospitals, homes for the aged and programs for people who are unemployed, who suffer from mental illness, have come under the justice system, and of other similar organisations. Most people who work in these fields are initially drawn to their work because they want to give something to the people whom they serve. The gifts they offer directly are their professional skills. But underlying their work is the desire that their relationship with the people whom they serve will also contribute to their growth or healing as human beings. Their service is an expression of love.
If love is important for the effectiveness of organisations its place must also be recognised in the policies that govern relationships. In many cases it is imperative that these relationships are stable and build trust, People who are ill benefit from having a regular doctor, children from having continuing teachers, and young people who are vulnerable from pairing with stable mentors who can help them access a variety of services. To slice and dice services so that people are routinely passed on from person to person or from agency to agency is not conducive to their flourishing. It treats people as objects to be dealt with and not as persons to be cared for.
When love guides an organisation, everyone within it will be invested in its mission to people. In their relationships with receptionists, teachers, nurses, doctors and fellow workers, those reliant on the organisation will find the same interest in them as persons and care for their welfare. Love will permeate the institution. This may seem to be idealistic religious hyperbole, and certainly all institutions and people within them will sometimes fall short of the ideal. But when you see this ideal embodied, as it is in the secular Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, it is difficult to describe the distinctive quality of the organisation without reference to love. Patients there often comment on how the consistent personal welcome they receive there helps them to become better persons as well as better medicated persons.
For love to rule in a workplace attention needs to be paid to all the networks of relationships between people and with the environment that constitute the organisation. Policies and protocols will spell out in detail what trust involves. The same respect will characterise the relationship between staff and the people they serve, between members of staff themselves, between managers and frontline workers, and between staff and the public. Respect feeds into enjoyment of one another’s company, flexibility to help one another out, and into the outflow of energy for demanding tasks. It also feeds the desire for better ways of working. Staff look forward to coming to work and the people for whom they care look forward to meet them.
Competition may make the world go round. Only love will take it to anywhere worth arriving at.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: Businesswoman using laptop with heart shape of sticky notes on the wall (Getty Images)