Meaningful Work in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

The co-author of The Responsible Company: Patagonia’s First 40 years describes how work at the clothing company he helped start became increasingly meaningful and satisfying over the decades as, beginning with a switch from conventional to organic cotton, Patagonia tackled increasingly difficult social and environmental problems in its operation and supply chain. Stanley draws on two papal encyclicals, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum(1891) and Francis’s Laudato Si (2015), and Catholic social justice principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, to illustrate the need and the possibility, in a time of social and environmental crisis, for business to mobilize its productive capacity to help regenerate human communities and the natural world; this would be meaningful work of the highest order.