It is becoming increasingly clear that organizations are inherently sacred in nature. They are not only influenced directly by religious beliefs, but also, as Boulding notes, by the impact which religion has on other critical sectors of society that in turn profoundly influence organizations. We have also noted previously in this book that the first organizations in premodern society were formed for religious and military purposes. The original forms that these organizations took (for example, the hierarchy of both the religious and military organizations) continue to be dominant today.
Thus, as we look specifically to the role that religion has played in forming modern day attitudes about capital and worker values, we turn not to the Catholic Church (as we do in our discussion about premodern organizations) but rather to the Protestant church. Whereas the Catholic Church, according to Weber, tended to emphasize service and good works as the primary criteria for salvation, John Calvin and other protestant reformers argued that an all-powerful and all-knowing God would have already determined the state of an individual’s salvation before that person was even born. Exhibiting his training as a lawyer and his overriding concern for order and structure, John Calvin envisioned a world in which personal futures were pre-determined (pre-destination) and in which spontaneous acts of charity and good work would have little bearing on the clockwork precision of a well-ordered society and universe.
If good works do not have much bearing on personal salvation, and if one’s own salvation or damnation is pre-determined, then how does one know what will be his or her eternal state? John Calvin suggested that an orderly and consistent God would structure a world for us while we are still on Earth that would parallel that to be found in heaven (or hell). Thus, our worldly prosperity is itself a sign of our impending salvation; whereas, a life on this earth of poverty, manual labor or crime is suggestive of a hellish, eternal life that is to come. While the wealthy person, in Calvin’s world, should never flaunt his or her wealth, and should be kind and considerate to those in need, the world will not be altered, in any substantial manner, by any personal act of charity or any social legislation or collective actions. The world simply is to be endured by those who have not been chosen, and God is to be continuously praised by those who have been chosen.
The primary effect of this Protestant ethic was to liberate the capitalistic and entrepreneurial energies of the emerging middle-class. Whereas the Catholic Church forbid the use of money to make money, the Protestant Churches indirectly encouraged investment of money, through the equation of personal financial prosperity with personal salvation. John Calvin himself, as Weber notes, certainly did not encourage the emerging modern day obsession with financial wealth and conspicuous consumption. His advocacy of pre-destination, however, removed the religious onus from the acquisition of money (rather than just land) and set the stage for later emphasis on financial wealth as the primary means of defining personal achievement and worth for many men and women.
