BUSINESS EXECUTIVE. - He is, as it were, the intermediary between the employer and the worker. In reality he too is a worker, inasmuch as he is not bound to the firm by a tie of ownership, but only by one of employment. His tie, however, given the importance and the responsibility of his office, is such that it constitutes him in a category of his own which, as a rule, employees do not distinguish from that of the employers. The company manager is like the pivot around which the manifold activity of the various productive factors revolves, whence his prominent importance in ensuring the firm full efficiency.
The figure of the company manager, neither owner nor entrepreneur, on the one hand, especially in large joint-stock enterprises, appears as the creature of the fateful separation between capital and labor; on the other hand, however, he is an example of what even the simple capable worker could become, independently of the availability of capital, with adequate preparation. All the more fittingly, therefore, Pius XII, in the Christmas message of 1942 (AAS, 35 [1943], p. 9 ff.), calls for the implementation of social measures that give the children of workers, endowed with particular talent, the possibility of a higher education.
Much has been written in recent times on the duties of the company manager, and there have been indicated, in a more or less lengthy cataloguing, the laws according to which he must attend to the government of the firm. It suffices to recall, among the most celebrated names, those of Emerson, Taylor, Alford, Fayol, Vilbois, La Vallière, Raymond, Le Chatelier, Landauer, etc. (cf. F. Mauro, Il capo nell'azienda industriale, 4th ed., Milan 1946). Almost all of them, however, confined themselves predominantly to the technical and artistic aspect of company management. But one must not underestimate the ethical aspect, which is of the greatest importance for one who, like the director of an enterprise, has dealings with a very varied human world, of different and often conflicting tendencies and mentalities.
It is true that in an enterprise in which the levers of command are handled by anonymous capital or by an entrepreneur exclusively preoccupied with his own profit, the possibilities of the company manager are quite limited and constrained; nevertheless, even if only by reason of the importance of his office, he always has a fairly vast radius of influence. His duties are therefore manifold, both with regard to the enterprise and with regard to the personnel and the common good.
In relation to the enterprise, he has the duty to attend to its proper functioning; and this not only by obligation of strict justice toward the employers, but also by a debt of justice, at least social justice, toward the employees. Pius XI observes in fact, in Quadragesimo anno, that sometimes the firm is unable to pay its workers a just wage because of indolence, incapacity and neglect of technical and economic progress (cf. I. Giordani, op. cit. in bibl., p. 328, n. 33).
The responsibility for this can also fall upon the company manager; and all the more does it fall upon him if he has a preeminent part in its administration; which today occurs with notable frequency, since, especially in large-scale enterprises, ownership is often divided and even pulverized among the many and very many shareholders who are extraneous to the life of the firm and are effectively invested only with the power to designate its administrators. The company manager is therefore bound to keep abreast of the progress of technology and of the fluctuating situations of the market. He is bound furthermore, as is obvious, to be objective in the drawing up of balance sheets, impartial in the selection of personnel and in the assignment of tasks, actively vigilant in ensuring hygiene and moral health in the work environments, solicitous that the religious and family needs of his employees find due satisfaction, and informed by human understanding with regard to their needs and their legitimate aspirations. Today more than ever the firm, while remaining an economic combination of the factors of wealth, takes on the face and value of a community of work; therefore the moral commitment of the company manager assumes ever greater importance, and by reason of his position of intermediacy between the holders of capital and the workers he can be a determining element in the progressive establishment of an economic-social order founded on human solidarity and active collaboration.