BBC Radio 4 2016-10-01

Good Morning.

Tomorrow thousands of people of all ages will enjoy playing in Sunday league football matches across the country. And there’s the now hugely popular 5 and 7 aside soccer tournaments played on floodlit pitches every night of the week between companies and businesses: at grass roots level – football is absolutely fine.

But at the very top, the game seems to have a distorted sense of what is right and what is wrong, summed up by various sports writers who are voicing the thought that corruption in football is a problem.

The international governing body of football (Fifa) and the English Football Association both have codes of ethics. The BBC has one and the company you work for probably has one too. They are ubiquitous on most corporate websites these days.

I remember the Old Testament scholar David Clines explaining in a lecture in Sheffield how contemporary codes of ethics or behaviour all originated in very ancient civilisations. The earliest-known – the Hammurabi Code, for instance, contains 282 clear laws - and punishments. Act like this or else (!) is the unequivocal exhortation.

The problem with contemporary codes of ethics is that they are easier read than acted-upon in the complexity of the modern day workplace. The College of Policing Code, for instance, refers to guiding behaviour and decision making on a day to day basis. The British Psychological Society’s code of ethics uses buzz words such as “respect”, “competence”, “responsibility” and “integrity”. Putting them into practice is another issue altogether.

The boss calls his worker in and says: “What is it that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer”. This isn’t the FA Chairman Greg Clark dealing swiftly this week with Sam Allardyce but the unjust steward being challenged by his employer in the New Testament.

Jesus uses this parable to give clear advice to those trying to wrestle with how to survive when greed, corruption and avarice are rife in the workplace. And he goes on to make two clear points. First, unrighteous acts at work rarely get us anywhere. And secondly, it is it not possible to serve two masters.

Whatever code of ethics we may have signed up to, focusing on doing the right thing in the workplace is critically important. As is not being distracted by others who attempt to grab our attention or distort our priorities, for whatever reason.