The Greater Good in the Boardroom: How Missouri's Jesuit-Formed Business Leaders Are Rethinking What Commerce Is For

The Latin word magis does not translate elegantly into the language of quarterly earnings reports. It means, roughly, "the more"—but not more in the sense of greater market share or expanded profit margins. In the Ignatian tradition, magis refers to the ceaseless orientation of one's efforts toward the greater glory of God and the deeper service of humanity. It is a standard that resists quantification, defies easy benchmarking, and sits in profound tension with the metrics by which American corporate culture typically measures success.

And yet, across Missouri, a growing cohort of business professionals formed in Jesuit educational institutions is attempting precisely that translation—carrying magis from the chapel into the conference room, from the spiritual exercises into the strategic plan.

Formation as Foundation

Jesuit education has always insisted that the purpose of learning is not credential accumulation but the formation of what Ignatius called the magis-oriented person: someone whose intellectual and professional capacities are ordered toward something larger than personal advancement. This conviction animates institutions such as Saint Louis University's Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business and Rockhurst University in Kansas City, both of which embed Ignatian values explicitly within their business curricula.

At Rockhurst, for instance, the integration of ethics, social responsibility, and what faculty describe as "reflective leadership" into core business coursework is not an elective supplement but a structural commitment. Students are regularly asked to examine not only what a business decision accomplishes financially but whom it affects, who bears its costs, and whether it advances or undermines human dignity.

For many graduates, this formation creates what might be described as a permanent interior discomfort—a conscience that refuses to be fully silenced when professional pressures push toward expedient rather than excellent choices.

Profiles in Magis: Missouri Leaders Navigating the Tension

Consider the experience of a mid-sized manufacturing executive based in the St. Louis metropolitan area who oversees a workforce of several hundred employees. A graduate of a Jesuit university, he describes a pivotal decision several years ago when cost-reduction consultants recommended outsourcing a significant portion of his production line to reduce labor expenses.

"The numbers made sense on paper," he said. "But I kept coming back to the question I'd been trained to ask: who benefits, and who pays the cost? The workers who would have lost their jobs had families, mortgages, lives built around that employment. The financial gain to the company was real but not transformative. The harm to those individuals would have been severe and lasting."

He declined the outsourcing recommendation, instead pursuing a longer-term efficiency strategy that preserved jobs while gradually improving margins. The decision was not without cost; it drew skepticism from certain investors and required difficult internal negotiations. He frames it not as an act of charity but as an application of magis: choosing the course of action that served the greater good of all stakeholders, even at the expense of the narrower good of short-term profitability.

A Kansas City entrepreneur who founded a regional food distribution company describes a similar orientation, shaped by years of involvement with Jesuit volunteer networks and parish social justice ministries. Her company has deliberately structured its supply chain to prioritize partnerships with small-scale Missouri farmers, accepting narrower margins in exchange for what she describes as "economic solidarity" with producers who would otherwise be crowded out by large agribusiness contracts.

"Jesuit formation taught me that every business decision is a moral decision," she said. "The question isn't whether my choices have ethical dimensions—they always do. The question is whether I'm paying attention to those dimensions or choosing not to."

The Tension Is Real

It would be dishonest to present the integration of magis into commercial life as straightforward or without genuine cost. Several business leaders interviewed for this article were candid about the institutional pressures that frequently pull against their spiritual convictions.

Publicly traded companies operate within a fiduciary framework that legally and culturally prioritizes shareholder returns. Executives who visibly subordinate profit to social purpose can face board challenges, investor pressure, and accusations of mismanaging capital. Even privately held businesses operate in competitive markets where ethically motivated cost structures can become genuine disadvantages.

One executive, who asked not to be identified by name or company, described the experience of losing a significant contract to a competitor whose lower bid was made possible by labor practices she considered exploitative. "I didn't regret my decision," she said. "But I'd be lying if I said it didn't cost us, and I'd be lying if I said I never wondered whether the cost was sustainable."

This honest acknowledgment of tension is itself consistent with Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius never promised that discerning the greater good would be easy or cost-free. His Spiritual Exercises are, in large part, a training in the capacity to endure the discomfort of choosing rightly when the easier path is clearly visible. The magis is not a formula that eliminates difficulty; it is a compass that orients one's navigation through it.

A Framework for the Faithful in Secular Commerce

For laypeople seeking to apply Jesuit values within their own professional contexts—whether as executives, middle managers, small business owners, or individual contributors—the following principles, drawn from the Ignatian tradition and the experiences of Missouri practitioners, offer a practical orientation.

Name the stakeholders. Before any significant decision, deliberately identify every party whose life will be materially affected by the outcome. This includes employees, customers, suppliers, community members, and the natural environment. The magis cannot be pursued without first knowing who stands within its scope.

Ask the harder question. Beyond "What is profitable?" and even beyond "What is ethical?" ask: "What course of action most fully serves the dignity and flourishing of all involved?" This question will not always yield a clean answer, but the discipline of asking it consistently reshapes decision-making culture over time.

Build structures that embody values. Individual good intentions are insufficient without institutional architecture that supports them. Jesuit-formed business leaders consistently point to the importance of embedding values into hiring practices, performance metrics, supplier agreements, and governance structures—making magis a systemic commitment rather than a personal aspiration.

Practice communal discernment. The Ignatian tradition has never been individualistic. Many of the leaders profiled here describe regular consultation with trusted colleagues, spiritual directors, or faith communities when facing consequential decisions. The wisdom of the community is a resource that secular business culture frequently underutilizes.

Tolerate the long arc. The greater good is rarely fully realized in a single fiscal quarter. Jesuit-formed leaders speak repeatedly of the necessity of patience—of trusting that decisions made with integrity will yield fruits that may not be immediately measurable but are nonetheless real.

Commerce as Vocation

The Jesuit tradition has never regarded secular work as spiritually inferior to religious life. Ignatius envisioned his companions as people fully engaged in the world, finding God not despite their worldly engagement but within it. The marketplace, in this vision, is not a spiritually neutral zone where faith is checked at the door but a field of genuine vocation—a place where the magis can be pursued with as much rigor and consequence as in any monastery or mission.

Missouri's Jesuit-formed business leaders are living proof that this vision is not merely theoretical. Their work is imperfect, their compromises are real, and their struggles are ongoing. But their collective witness suggests something important: that the question Ignatius placed at the center of all discernment—"What ought I to do for Christ?"—remains as urgent and as generative in the boardroom as it has ever been anywhere else.