Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

management worthy of the name must rest on two spiritual foundations: the recognition of
human dignity and authority.
a) Human dignity as the guideline for personnel management
Personnel management possesses its model in human dignity, a realization that
entails considerable consequences. As is well known, considerations of profitability and cost
efficiency led to a concern for people in the modern factories. The exhortations given to entrepreneurs
in the first half of the nineteenth century by English manufacturer and sociopolitical
thinker Robert Owen is characteristic: „Experience has certainly shown you the difference
that exists between a polished, shining, mechanical piece of equipment and another
that is dirty, out of order, shows unnecessary wear, and becomes inoperable again and again.
If, then, the effort expended upon machines produces such advantageous results, why should
one not expect the same from the care that one takes with people, whose structure is much
more admirable? ...Is this not natural, when one comes to the conclusion that these much more
complicated and delicate machines will gain in power and effectiveness...if one keeps them
clean and treats them in a friendly manner, if one spares them unnecessary mental wear and
tear, and if one
gives them a sufficient amount of food?“ 15
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, occupational psychology, occupational physiology,
and industrial psychology have proved scientifically that it pays to be concerned about
personnel management and to take the physical and psychical characteristics of man into consideration
in the factory and the office. Today, however, a turnabout seems to be at hand that
has been called „truly Copernican“ (0. v. Nell-Breuning). Just as in the laboratories of largescale
chemical enterprises a transition was made from limited research for particular purposes
to disinterested basic research, so also leading men in factories and ad- ministrations are beginning
to profess disinterested personnel management, i.e. to see from the start their fellow
human being and neighbor in every co-worker and to take all measures from this purer point
of view. The basic idea determining personnel management is thus not profitability in the
sense of intelligent egoism, but human dignity. And, incidentally, it will be shown that, in the
long run, the prosperous development of enterprises can be assured only by this attitude.
In „Centesimus annus“ John Paul II postulates the model of a „society of free work, of enterprise
and of participation“ (35,2) and notes in this context: „The Church acknowledges the
legitimate role of profit as an indication that a business is functioning well...But profitability
is not the only indicator of a firm's condition. It is possible for the financial accounts to be in
order; and yet for the people - who make up the firm's most valuable asset - to be humiliated
and their dignity offended. Besides being morally inadmissible, this will eventually have negative
repercussions on the firm's economic efficiency. In fact, the purpose of a business firm is
not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons,
who in various ways are endeavoring to satisfy their basic needs, and who form a particular
group at the service of the whole of society.“ (35.3)
The recognition of human dignity presupposes, not indiscriminate leveling, but equality of
value. The superior will therefore not deal with his or her co-workers from above in a patriarchal
condescension, but will be just and noble for all. Workers possess a keen sense of this.
For example, a female worker asks to have a talk with the director. During the talk, the director
turns a little metal disk with- in his visitor's field of vision „Make it short.“ The worker
thought afterwards: „I can understand that the director does not have very much time. But the
man should say that because a human being is sitting before him. He should not use a metal
disk for that.“
15 Cited in Gide-Rist, Geschichte der volkswirtschaftlichen Lehmleinungen (Jena, 1921), 257
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