Family companies enjoy the freedom to mix business and religion. But that can be a two-edged sword.
If you’re on the road in central Michigan, you can find God on the back of a garbage truck, thanks to the Granger family’s group of seven solid waste firms. “Man crowns success; God crowns faithfulness,” proclaims the large white lettering on the truck’s rear panel, just above the more traditional warning that “This vehicle makes frequent stops.”
In what he called a spirit of goodwill toward motorists stuck behind his slow-moving, often malodorous trucks, Ron Granger, co-founder of the $30 million Granger group in Lansing, Mich., decided to make the experience an inspirational one. He had his fleet imprinted with concepts that according to his family have motivated them over the years: Bible verses and sayings attesting to the glory of God. The same messages appear on the company’s invoices and have been recorded for its telephone hold system.
“We’ll get comments from people about how wonderful these little things are and how they inspire them,” says Tom Hofman, the company’s human resources manager and son-in-law of co-founder Jerry Granger. “And we’ll also get calls from people saying, ‘If you were really Christian, you wouldn’t require us to pay our bills on time.’”
The Grangers’ faith influences their office décor, too. Visitors to company headquarters encounter a Bible proudly displayed along with the company’s mission statement—which begins, “Granger is a Christian, family-owned business built upon the Golden Rule.”
New York diamond dealer Joseph Schlussel, 65, by contrast, is a modern Orthodox Jew, meaning that although he adheres to a strict interpretation of Jewish law, he doesn’t separate himself from secular society in appearance or social interactions. He’s an affable, grandfatherly man who was born in Czechoslovakia and survived the Holocaust by hiding with his family in a basement in Hungary. Schlussel and his wife, Rose, operate The Diamond Registry, a genuine mom-and-pop business in the heart of Manhattan’s diamond district. Their small office, cluttered with gemological reference books, overflowing filing cabinets and yellowed issues of trade magazines, belies the beauty of the diamonds they sell, which are tucked away in a safe and protected by an intricate security system.
Schlussel won’t disclose his revenues but says he services hundreds of jewelers: “It’s a substantial business for two people.” His website, www.diamondregistry.com, enables him to receive wholesale and retail sales inquiries any time of day or night. But he won’t work on the Sabbath, even though many customers would prefer to meet him on a weekend. “Whatever you lose on the Sabbath, you gain in quality time,” Schlussel philosophizes.
Religion has been much in the news, ever since President Bush concluded that faith-based social service agencies may serve human needs more effectively than government and secular bureaucracies. Which raises an interesting question: How effective and attractive are faith-based businesses? As the examples of the Grangers and the Schlussels attest, a family business is an ideal place to earn a living if you’re religious. Owning a company gives a family the freedom to close down on the sabbaths and holy days of its choice, to prohibit objectionable practices such as swearing, even to hold prayer meetings and Bible study sessions during business hours.
“We see the workplace as an extension of our lives,” says Jerry Granger, 60. Although he insists that his company exerts no pressure on non-believing employees, he adds, “If you find it offensive to be in a company where they ask a blessing before a company meal or see in our mission statement that we’re Christian, then probably this isn’t a great place for you to be.”
Building a company on a moral foundation strengthens both business and family, says Henry Landes, founder and president of the Delaware Valley Family Business Center in Pennsylvania. “We’re talking about more than the viability of the business—we’re talking about the legacy of values.” After all, he notes, most families’ values are rooted in their religious tradition. And transmission of values is a family’s goal, even if family members don’t discuss such principles explicitly.
“When a business family passionately shares values, they build tremendous competitive advantage in the marketplace,” Landes says. “That’s why people like family businesses—because they stand for something.”
Yet owners who run “faith-based businesses” also face daunting challenges. They must be careful not to offend employees, suppliers or customers who don’t share their faith. They must articulate and continually review their family and business values to ensure that the company adheres to those principles. And they must transmit their values to their children if they want to preserve the company’s spiritual as well as economic legacy.
They must also be prepared to sacrifice revenues occasionally. In the 1970s, for example, the Granger family insisted on removing one of its waste containers from an adult night club. “We called the owner up and said, ‘We don’t believe in what you’re doing, so get someone else to service you,’” Jerry Granger recalls. “The guy went ballistic.” The company’s principled stand turned into a blessing in disguise when the spurned customer took his complaint to the media. “This thing got national attention,” Granger marvels. “All we did was take away a garbage can.”
Religious businesses often must explain their policies to workers as well as customers. The Love Box Co., a $200 million manufacturer of corrugated boxes in Wichita, Kan., operates under the principles of Christianity and the infallibility of the Bible, according to Robert D. Love, 77, chairman and son of the founder. Love recalls telling a pair of romantically involved employees that they couldn’t travel together. “They weren’t married, and they weren’t thinking of getting married,” he says.
“We’re not dictators,” adds Love’s wife, Lillian, 82. “But the principle is established as to what we believe in.”
On the other hand, a company’s religious character can empower employees to express their own beliefs. At the Mangum Group, an $80 million highway construction and asphalt services company in Raleigh, N.C., workers spontaneously organized a voluntary meeting to pray for the nation before the November 2000 presidential election. “It was not a top-down kind of thing,” recalls president Michael Mangum, 41. “I couldn’t even tell you who went or how many were there. They knew it was totally consistent with the company’s values; they didn’t have to ask permission to do it.”
Mangum says conducting business in a way that promotes the family’s faith while respecting others’ beliefs is “something we’ve had to work through.” The company was founded by his grandparents, “salt-of-the-earth-type folks” who tilled the land with mules and farm instruments, later diversifying by hitching construction equipment to the mules. “Today, they would be seen as quite conservative,” Mangum says. “The basic Biblical principles of honesty and integrity were always there; the tithe was always there.”
As president, out of respect for his diverse workforce, Mangum has vetoed family members’ suggestions for mandatory meetings with overtly spiritual content. But a Christian library is housed in an area of the accounting department. “It’s just there; it’s not required reading,” he explains.
Mangum says he’s unaware of any employee objections to the practices at his company, “But I’m probably the last person they would come to,” he acknowledges.
Indeed, a company whose owners wear their religion on their sleeve appeals to many workers and often promotes employee retention, says James E. Barrett, who heads the family business practice of Cresheim Consultants in Philadelphia. “The people who work there—family or not—who find this of value really do value it,” Barrett says.
Yet in a multi-cultural society, not all employees will likely share the faith of the family owners, which can cause legal problems. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which applies to companies with 15 or more employees that engage in interstate commerce) prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion in hiring, promotions and terminations.
It’s clearly illegal to take action against an employee who declines to participate in Bible study sessions or prayer meetings. But it’s legal for an employer to sponsor such gatherings, notes Doug Laycock, a law professor at the University of Texas, Austin. “In the private sector, people—even employers—have a Constitutional right to exercise their religion freely and a Constitutional right to free speech—even religious speech,” Laycock says.
But while holding workplace prayers and Bible study sessions may be within an employer’s legal rights, it can offend employees of other religions, says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a Princeton, N.J., non-profit organization. “There is a certain subtle pressure on the employees to go, even if they don’t want to, because they want to make the boss happy,” he says. As for opening company meetings with a prayer, “What choice does the employee who doesn’t believe in the prayer have?” he asks rhetorically.
Cindy Minon, 42, who in 1991 succeeded her father as president and CEO of JC’s Glass, a $9 million Phoenix auto-glass company, is a committed Catholic who is active in a ministry for teens (see “Confessions of a born-again CEO,” FB, Winter 2000). “I try not to make people feel uncomfortable,” Minon says. “Christ walked on this earth as an example. I can give the example of my faith just by the decisions I make.”
Family business leaders who sponsor prayer or study sessions say these gatherings are morale boosters.
At Excel Foundry and Machine in Pekin, Ill., a $12 million supplier of parts for mining and industrial equip ment, Bible study groups meet on company time. CEO Doug Parsons, 32, says he’d like to expand the sessions to incorporate topics like financial planning from a Biblical perspective. Parsons acknowledges that some employees attend the sessions “just to have a cup of coffee and a donut.” But he believes that all attendees gain something from the programs. “They see the core values of the company and why they’re Biblically based.”
Differences in religious faith aren’t necessarily a negative factor for those whose religion is important to them: Consider the large number of non-Jews who supported Jewish vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman in the 2000 election. The Delaware Valley Family Business Center’s Henry Landes recalls visiting a tailor shop in Calcutta, India, and seeing the proprietor roll out a prayer mat to say Muslim prayers, disregarding the presence of his customer.
“I’m not Muslim, but I feel good when people are committed to something beyond themselves,” Landes says. “I want to do business with that family.”
Gary Charlestein, 56, is CEO of Premier, a fourth-generation family-owned dental and medical products company in King of Prussia, Pa., with sales of more than $25 million. He’s also an ordained rabbi who wears a yarmulke (skullcap) to the office. He worked for the business even while studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, calling on accounts in the New York area in between classes. He served congregations in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Trenton, N.J., before joining Premier’s staff. Today he says he spends about 80% of his time running the business and 20% as a rabbi, teaching Jewish subjects and serving on the boards of Jewish communal organizations.
But occasionally Charlestein’s two roles overlap. Premier co-sponsors “Lunch and Learn” Bible study sessions—open to Jews and non-Jews alike—held under the auspices of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Jewish movement. George Kunnmann, a Bible-believing Christian who is married to a Premier employee, has attended the “Lunch and Learn” sessions and found them enlightening. “Being a Christian and studying with a bunch of Jewish people—that’s pretty neat,” Kunnmann says.
His wife, Kate Kunnmann, a marketing services administrator at Premier, says she enjoys the culture-crossing experiences afforded by her job. Seeing the family celebrate Jewish holidays “brought me closer to them,” she says. “I like that they’re proud of who they are, just like I’m proud that I’m a Christian.”
Arthur DeFehr, president of Palliser Furniture Ltd. in Winnipeg, Manitoba, runs a pluralistic company that nonetheless puts a priority on faith. Palliser is Canada’s largest furniture manufacturer, but it started as a one-man shop, founded by DeFehr’s father, A.A. DeFehr, in his basement. Today, the company has annual revenues of $375 million Canadian (about $248 million U.S.) and about 5,000 employees who hail from 70 countries. “My father might have used the language that it’s a Christian company; I use the language that I’m a Christian person,” says Arthur DeFehr, a Mennonite. Many of his employees come from Muslim or Buddhist backgrounds, he notes.
“I try to employ senior people who reflect what I consider the right values,” says DeFehr. When interviewing a candidate for a management-level position, DeFehr discusses the company and its values. Anti-discrimination laws prevent him from asking about job candidates’ faith, but DeFehr says he requests information to help him understand if they will fit in. Those who’ve done their homework on the company often volunteer information about their faith, he notes.
In order for a family to successfully operate a business according to its values, it’s crucial for these values to be codified in a statement, says family business consultant Leslie Dashew, president of Human Side of Enterprise, Scottsdale, Ariz., and a member of the Aspen Family Business Group. Employees will readily implement clearly defined values, she notes.
Often, however, relatives have trouble developing a philosophy embraced by all, especially if various branches belong to different sects or if the beliefs of some are more traditional than others’. Dashew stresses that only values shared by all family members should guide the family. All might agree, for example, to close the business on the Sabbath. But a devout relative might also want to require all employees to pray together, while a family member who’s active in the company would veto this idea because of concerns about discrimination charges.
“It’s better to have the dialogue, so you know everyone is reading from the same hymnal,” Dashew notes.
Palliser Furniture’s values statement, for example, reads: “Building on our heritage of Faith, we aspire to: demonstrate integrity in all relationships, promote the dignity and values of each other, respect the environment, support the community, strive for excellence in all we do.” DeFehr says company managers struggled with the phrase “our heritage of Faith,” with some arguing that “our” should be changed to “a,” given the multi-cultural workforce. In the end, DeFehr settled on “our,” reasoning that while employees are encouraged to bring their own faith to the party, “we’re not compromising on our values.”
The final step in the process, Dashew says, is to have the company’s human resources director review these statements to ensure compliance with applicable anti-discrimination laws.
The Love family teaches values to its children through home schooling, says Philip Elder, 50, a father of seven, who is the Love Box Co.’s vice president and the son-in-law of Robert D. and Lillian Love. The company operates a 50-student school on its campus.
The Mangums, a multi-denominational Christian family, use family gatherings to strengthen their commitment to their ideals. The way to preserve core family values, Mangum notes, is by helping children appreciate the faith that guides the family and business leaders. “They see how it gives life and unity and common purpose and harmony to the members of the family unit,” he says. “They see no divorces, no estrangements.”
Of course, some employees in faith-based companies get the wrong message—that their faith is more important than their competence. Mangum recalls one of his employees who took to aggressively proselytizing co-workers to the point of interference with the employee’s work responsibilities. “We had to reprimand and eventually terminate that employee,” Mangum recalls. At the Granger group, human resources manager Hofman notes that some job applicants try to earn points by stressing their faith: “If they say, ‘I’m seeking employment here because I know you’re good Christian people,’ I will nod and say, ‘I’m happy that you want to work here’—and then I begin to ask them job-related questions.”
And, to be sure, errant souls can be found even in faith-based companies. Doug Parsons of Excel recalls one of his former sales reps who advocated bribing a South American purchasing agent to generate sales revenue for the company. “He actually tried to justify it by saying that he would tithe his bonus check, and it would generate more money for the church,” Parsons says. Parsons rejected the suggestion, saying that God wouldn’t honor such an effort.
What faith did for Mother Teresa and St. Katharine Drexel, it can also do for faith-based businesses. At one point, Jerry Granger and his family considered selling off their garbage business. The decision not to sell “was a direct answer to a prayer,” Granger says. Their faith, he says, told them that “We are supposed to be in business in this community.”
“We’ve all asked ourselves why we do what we do,” says his son-in-law Tom Hofman. “From time to time there are opportunities—somebody comes a-courtin’ and asks if we’re for sale. But the values of the company are important and are one of the reasons we’re here.” The challenge, he notes, is “how we’re going to keep that going.”
To be sure, strong religious beliefs won’t guarantee a company’s character or even its survival. W.C. Coleman, founder of Coleman Cos., the Kansas-based camping-equipment giant, was a devout Baptist who never touched alcohol or tobacco and often used Bible quotations to explain company policies. When striking workers destroyed a competitor’s factory, Coleman offered the competitor his facilities, saying, “Rejoice not when thine enemy faileth and be not glad when he stumbleth” (Proverbs 24:17).
But the company’s adherence to its Baptist traditions didn’t protect a third generation of Colemans from falling into the hands of hostile takeover artist Ronald O. Perelman (an Orthodox Jew, to boot) in 1989. To add insult to injury, Coleman Cos. was acquired in 1998 by Sunbeam Corp., then headed by the notorious corporate dismantler Albert “Chainsaw” Dunlap.