We follow the social encyclicals of the Catholic Church.
In addition, we utilize the method of St. Thomas Aquinas and his teachings on man's habits and psychology in order to bridge the gap between the social encyclicals and the modern discourse of management.
We believe that both the encyclicals and a Thomistic understanding of human nature in the context of modern managerial issues are necessary to better understand the responsibilities we all face at work - technical responsibilities as well as moral responsibilities - and in order to meet these responsibilities.
With such approaches managers and corporations will particularly excel over those equipped with a purely secular formation. Naturally, basic issues relative to work are common to employees and supervisors. But a deeper understanding of these issues is necessary for supervisors and managers whose added and essential responsibility is to supervise the work of others.
We believe that work is both a right and an obligation.
Business organizations, which among other things are the institutionalization of the work to be done by the many, find their dynamics and moral justification in that they have a duty of service to members of the wider society, as well as to that society at large, to provide the good and services which allow individuals and communities to function and be free to perform in their other spheres of responsibilities and competence.
Further, we believe there is a great need to transform the economic order so that it becomes more compatible with the teachings of the Church.
Along with St. Antoninus, who was archbishop of Florence - a rich city of merchants where many business techniques and mechanisms were first invented - we believe that business people can earn their way to heaven by applying the teaching of the Church to their trade. Business and management may be a priviledged path to sanctity nowadays.
At the macro, national, level: time and again directed economies have proven total failures. Free-market economies are the only types consistent with the free nature of human beings. Government regulations, in our over-administered modern societies, are often barriers to prosperity which should be removed for the sake of the common good. This is the first obligation.
But at the same time economic agents (that is consumers as well as producers) must learn to become responsible moral agents in the day-to-day decisions they make which affect the economy. This is the second obligation.
These responsibilities must be learned. This Institute is set up also to help in this regard.