Character Challenges American Christian Business Leaders Face in the Secular Digital Age

In the digital age, Christian business leaders are a minority who are commonly expected to change their principles of leadership to fit within the secularized culture. These expectations for change are generating character challenges to the very core of a Christian business leader’s moral convictions and forcing them to make decisions which pit the practice of their proclaimed faith against a secularized business practice. In these workplace challenges, the Christian business leader’s faith, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion compete with secularized practices accepted in today’s American culture. Additionally, digital age behavioral visibility, which can be leveraged to negatively portray the intent of the leader’s actions globally in near real time, further compounds the character challenge as the leader must weigh the implications of and potential for a secular majority pushback. This research documents the insufficient understanding of Christian business leader character challenges prevalent in the secularized digital age. It provides granularized insights into the types of character challenges they face which form both practical implications to inform general business practices and theoretical implications to improve the understanding of business theory.