WHAT is business ultimately for? This deceptively simple question has long hovered over boardrooms, academic journals, and policy debates.
In an age where business is routinely measured by efficiency metrics and shareholder returns, there is an emerging hunger for a deeper understanding of enterprise - one that acknowledges not only economic but human flourishing.
This sentiment is not new to Zimbabwe. In fact, it echoes the rhythms of rural cooperatives, the logic of communal land stewardship, and even the ethos of emerging innovation hubs now dotting the nation’s academic institutions.
Scholars of Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS) have tried to give voice to this yearning, describing flourishing firms as ones where individuals thrive and communities are uplifted.
Yet the field often falters when pressed to explain why these forms of business stir such hope — and what ultimately makes them “positive”.
In this respect, Lloyd E. Sandelands’ theological response, The Real Mystery of Positive Business, offers a crucial intervention. Drawing from the Christian tradition, he argues that business becomes truly positive when it participates in the mystery of God by fostering joyful solidarity among persons.
This article builds on Sandelands’ vision while situating it in Zimbabwe’s own cultural, spiritual and economic context.
By weaving theology with examples from Zimbabwean enterprise, it explores how business can become a site of communion, not just commerce.
- Reliving human dignity through Zim enterprise
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Beyond metrics
In much of modern economic thought, people in business are treated as interchangeable units of labour — homo economicus — whose primary function is to maximise output.
This philosophy, imported wholesale into post-colonial African economies through structural adjustment and orthodox business education, eroded traditional Zimbabwean conceptions of work and worth.
Yet this mechanistic logic stands in stark contrast to enduring indigenous principles such as ubuntu — "I am because we are". It also clashes with the lived realities of many Zimbabwean enterprises that prioritise community over competition.
Consider Kushinga Phikelela Polytechnic, a vocational and agricultural training institute in Marondera. Its approach to business education is not just about farming for profit, but about cultivating self-sufficiency, community integration, and stewardship.
Graduates are often embedded in their localities, not as economic actors alone, but as community builders. Their work is seen as a vocation, not merely a job.
Similarly, at University Agro-Innovation Hubs, the emphasis on horticulture, pork production, and industrial chemistry is gradually expanding from revenue generation to community empowerment.
When young scientists are invited to co-design processing methods with rural farmers, they are not just solving technical problems — they are building relationships of trust, reciprocity and hope.
These moments, often overlooked in mainstream business analysis, are examples of being with others rather than acting upon them. They point to a deeper reality in which spirit, not structure, governs meaning.
Restoring business as communion
Sandelands challenges us to move from “seeing” others as objects to “beholding” them as persons imbued with divine dignity.
In Zimbabwean Christian ethics, this idea is familiar. Churches, particularly in the Catholic and Methodist traditions, have long promoted “integral human development”— the growth of the whole person, economically, spiritually, and relationally.
A local illustration of this theology-in-practice can be seen in the Silveira House Jesuit Social Justice Centre.
For decades, it has trained communities in ethical entrepreneurship, emphasising personal transformation alongside market literacy.
One graduate, a youth from Mbare, once remarked that before attending Silveira House, he thought business was only for “crooks or capitalists”.
Afterward, he saw it as “a way of answering God's call to be useful to others”.
This echoes Sandelands' point that business, properly conceived, is a mode of communion — a context in which we give and receive being. It is, in Aquinas’ language, an act of love, not merely of exchange.
This perspective elevates leadership from authority to service and redefines work as participation in God’s creative and redemptive mission.
Business in the image of God
If every human being is made in the imago Dei, as Christian theology affirms, then every business interaction is also potentially sacred. This is especially salient in Zimbabwe, where economic dysfunction often collides with deep spiritual longing.
To work with dignity in such a context is not merely a technical triumph but a moral and theological one.
Take, for example, Kutsaga Research Station, Zimbabwe’s centre for agricultural science.
While primarily tasked with innovation in cash crops, its community outreach programmes — offering technical support to smallholder farmers — show how institutions can be driven by more than research metrics.
They become vessels of accompaniment, empowerment, and shared destiny. When scientists partner with local growers to improve yields or processing methods, they become stewards, not just technicians.
Here, Sandelands’ theology of “beholding” comes alive.
Likewise, in the Mutemwa Leprosy Settlement, where the late John Bradburne served the marginalised until his martyrdom, one finds an enduring business lesson: that people are not problems to solve but mysteries to embrace.
The community there still draws support through faith-based enterprise, including craft-making and subsistence farming - models that defy the anonymity of market transactions and reaffirm personal presence and care.
From scarcity to grace
Christian humanism reveals that business becomes truly human — and therefore truly good — when it models the life of Christ.
This means self-giving leadership, solidarity with the vulnerable, and a vision of work as a means to holiness.
An embodiment of this spirit can be found in Chikombedzi Mission Hospital’s business unit in southern Zimbabwe. In one of the country’s poorest districts, the hospital runs agricultural and artisanal projects not just to generate revenue, but to restore dignity to patients and caregivers alike.
The staff draw strength from liturgical rhythms, community prayer, and a theological commitment to serve Christ in the wounded.
In this way, the business of healing becomes more than medicine — it becomes a sacrament of love.
This mirrors what Sandelands describes as the joyful solidarity of persons in the common good.
It is the Church, not merely as an institution, but as a living enterprise of grace.
Even businesses not formally religious can learn from this model: to see workers as co-creators, customers as neighbours, and profit as the fruit of just relationships.
Conclusion
At a time when Zimbabwe is reimagining its economic future — amid currency reforms, regional trade ambitions, and efforts toward industrialisation — there is a danger that business discourse may once again default to technocratic tropes and extractive models. But there is another path.
By reclaiming the spiritual dimension of enterprise, Zimbabwean businesses can become places where dignity is affirmed, relationships flourish, and the divine mystery of being is honoured.
This means looking beyond compliance to conscience, beyond efficiency to empathy, and beyond profit to purpose.
Sandelands reminds us that people are drawn to “positive business” not because it performs better on quarterly reports, but because it answers a deeper call — the call to be in communion with others and ultimately with God.
Zimbabwe, with its theological richness, social resilience, and community-based traditions, is uniquely positioned to model this alternative economy.
The challenge ahead is not simply to “do better business,” but to be more human in business. behold others!
To honour God! And to build enterprises that are not only successful — but sacred.
Jongwe is an experienced business consultant with extensive expertise across various industries in Southern Africa, including higher education- WhatsApp at +27 824083661/+263 788016938 or by email at [email protected].
