Gudenus (Bank Gutmann), “Family businesses play a key role in the common good and in humanity’s development”

“Families engaged in business play a key role in the development of the common good, in social development, and in the economic needs of humanity.” Gordian Gudenus, a partner and director of the Bank Gutmann of Vienna, expressed this conviction during the panel on the Vocation of the Business Leader: A Family Business Perspective, introduced and moderated this evening by Card. Turkson. This meeting is taking place in the context of the Pastoral Congress promoted by the Dublin World Meeting of Families (21-26 August). Family businesses—for example, the banker notes—“represent two-thirds of the companies in the world, employ 60% of the workforce, and contribute over 70% to the world’s GDP.” For Gudenus, family values that help overcome “the domination of selfishness and short-term economic goals,” offer families of entrepreneurs “a potential key as agents of the common good.” Moreover, families by nature think “in the long run” and “develop strategies to face future challenges.” With this focus on long-term success and care for the next generation, “family businesses are natural advocates of a more conscious capitalism, as they seek to leave a positive legacy for the generations to come,” in the face of the pressures that could induce business leaders “to (falsely) believe that their professional lives are incompatible with their family... and their spiritual life.” The Church, concludes Gudenus, “plays a role in supporting the values of families of entrepreneurs, helping them to live up to their vocation as reference models and faithful administrators of their enterprises, and to become effective agents of social and economic inclusion.”