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We are a growing network of Quakers and others. Most of us are Quakers presently in membership and all of us are in sympathy with what Friends stand for in the world. We support Q&B's core purpose of promoting Quaker principles in business and the workplace. Some of us work in the charity and public sectors at various levels of responsibility, others in the profit making sector, where we are either self employed, own and manage our own business, or work for manufacturing or service companies. We are widely, thinly spread across Local Meetings. The Quakers & Business (Q&B) Group is the network through which we find each other easily when we need. It also gives us a collective voice. We welcome members, not just Quakers, who are in sympathy with our aims. You can join online here. Q&B is a listed informal group within Britain Yearly Meeting. We have members in other Yearly Meetings and are in touch with similar networks elsewhere in the world. You can find our Constitution in the Documents section. What do we do?We run two major events (a Spring Gathering, which includes our AGM, and an Autumn Conference) each year, to bring us all together - so you can meet new Friends who share your interests - and make new business friends too. We publish Good Business: Ethics at Work - Advices and Queries on Personal Standards of Conduct at Work, which is available from Friends House Bookshop. The proceeds go to support Quaker Social Action. |
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Written by Oliver Robertson
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From the Friend magazine 1 May 2009 edition
Quakers should have the courage of their convictions and conduct business in accordance with their values, a gathering of Friends has heard.
At the spring gathering of Quakers & Business (Q&B), participants were told that the global recession could make the unthinkable thinkable and provide an opportunity for different business models to flourish. Shari’a banking (banking in accordance with Islamic teachings) shows that religion can play a central role in business, while many early Quaker enterprises succeeded because of the personal links and the trust they built up.
‘We Friends tend too often to hold highly spiritualised notions about ourselves. We must recognise that our spiritual lives develop in conversation with the socio-economic world in which we live’, said Tim Phillips, clerk of Q&B, quoting American Quaker Douglas Gwyn.
The global economic crisis was likened by one speaker to a ‘slow train crash’, in which each carriage pulls the next one off the rails. The banking crisis, economic slowdown and growing unemployment could be followed by another ‘carriage’, possibly a natural disaster or sea level rise.
Many Friends at the conference felt that business would have to change. Eoin McCarthy explained that elements of our present economy, such as mineral extraction, are inherently unsustainable, while Tim Phillips referred to Godric Bader’s concept of ‘the birth pangs of the new age’, moving from the ‘absolutism and selfish greed’ of the present system to one of feeling responsible for the Earth and its inhabitants. We need to look at the bigger picture rather than just particular sectors of the economy, it was argued, particularly in such an interlinked and globalised world.
‘Some people were almost excited about the change and the possibilities it was bringing’, said Jo Poole, one of the participants. However, she continued, ‘there was also a lot of concern over the hardships that will be coming and facing people’. But overall the message was positive: ‘We must act. We must be called to action as Quakers in business.’ |
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