Over recent years there’s been something of a groundswell of interest in the concept of ‘ethical enterprise’ – the agendas around corporate social responsibility; the growth of the fair trade movement; government policy in respect of social enterprise and legislation concerning environmental impact to name but a few.

Clearly, this interest reflects the growing sense of ethics, or rather, what society and the people who make it up (you and I) feel to be appropriate and just. Given that there would also seem to be such an overlap with the values and principles of faith based organisations (whose ethics are not determined by society per se), it should perhaps be no surprise that ethical enterprise is becoming a term which includes those organisations of faith and those of an otherwise ethical mission (there is a difference which I’ll soon come to).

However, there is a risk to this growth and emergence of ethical enterprise – ethics are subjective: they are whatever we choose and shape them to be. For example, 200 years ago (after the introduction of company law, local authorities and other current institutions), the slave trading industry was not only deemed ethically acceptable, it was proactively encouraged on a global scale, yet today we actively oppose any activity that bears even a passing resemblance to it; and only ten years ago fair trade coffee was seen to be so incidental to the marketplace that Nestlé stated it would never become involved in it, yet it’s recently spent millions on launching its own fair trade coffee brand.

Therefore ethical enterprises, in whatever form they take, and their owners, managers, employees and communities need to be aware that they’re trading in an environment of changing fashions and trends. Faith, however, is more consistent in offering universal truths: teachings and theologies that are consistent and absolute despite changing fashions, trends, political agendas, etc.

Indeed, it could be argued that it was faith based enterprises in the 18th and 19th centuries that directly led to the concept of ethical enterprise we see today. And it was they by their working practices that changed our expectations of what is ethical in today’s workplace – minimum working ages, limits on how many hours work can be expected of an employee, responsibilities of employers and so on.

The challenge then to this new generation of ethical enterprise is what is your motivation? Are you responding to changes in the marketplace and your customers’ expectations and demands, or acting from a deeper desire to influence the bigger picture? If so, you could have a lot to learn from faith based enterprises that have been successfully trading from a values set that has lasted centuries and have in turn directly influenced the values and ethics of today’s marketplaces.

Adrian Ashton is an independent adviser, trainer and consultant, www.adrianashton.co.uk