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WorldCom has been in the headlines since 2002 because of the $11 billion fraud that it acknowledged at that time. In order to please Wall Street and investors, WorldCom's top executives inflated the firm's profits by misallocating expenses and making many false accounting entries. The reactions of managers within WorldCom varied dramatically. Vice President of Internal Audit Cynthia Cooper and internal auditors Gene Morse and Glyn Smith became suspicious of accounting entries, which had no supporting documentation. They decided to pursue their suspicions. Working on their own time for several months and often late at night, the team ultimately uncovered $3.8 billion in false entries. During the course of their investigation, the internal auditors presented their suspicious information to both the chief financial officer Scott Sullivan and to WorldCom external auditors at Arthur Andersen.¹ Both Sullivan and the auditors at Arthur Andersen defended the entries and refused to provide additional information or to pursue the matter any further. The internal auditors at WorldCom found the fraudulent accounting entries four-quarters after they first began.

The past few years have seen a swelling of interest in explicitly Christian approaches to business ethics. The time is ripe, it would seem, to map the diversity of approaches within what I term “Christian business ethics.”¹ Here I will frame the diversity of approaches as answers to the distinctive kind of question which religiously minded ethicists have brought to the terrain of business. I will not use theological or religious terms or categories, since such language is not likely to be of interest to philosophers and social scientists. Drawing up this map has been rendered easier by the fact that Christian business ethicists themselves have used a language which is readily accessible to listeners outside their traditions.

This chapter explores Christian wisdom in peacemaking, with particular reference to the experience of Christian International Peace Service (CHIPS). It expounds on the fundamentals of the Servant Leadership model and then draws these two strands together into the realm of business, with examples of how they are relevant in a commercial setting. This research can be aligned with principles of ‘participatory action research’, in so far as the author has been part of the community of practice generated by and informing the work of CHIPS in a range of peacemaking activities. Although CHIPS never makes claims to have made peace, it has proven beyond doubt that teams of Christians living humbly in the tension area, employing Biblical principles in peace-making and Servant Leadership, are incredibly effective in contributing to peace. Furthermore, the successful employment of servant leadership and peacemaking principles within commercial settings are illustrated through three business examples.

This paper includes an examination of two key issues on price decisions: (1) how should price decisions be made (the strategic and normative issue) within market contexts, and (2) how are price decisions actually made (the execution and implementation of price decisions). The paper closes with some observations useful for applied research and strategies for making effective pricing decisions. The propositions and literature review show that one pricing strategy does not fit a brand in all market contexts that brand executives experience annually in managing brands. Setting specific price points requires continuing deliberate management responses to dynamic market contexts. This paper provides useful sense-making conjunctive steps to accomplish such deliberate thinking effectively relevant for different market contexts.