The Impact of Biblical Values on Marriott's Business Practices

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Marriott International's integration of biblical values into its business practices. It begins with an abstract summarizing the long-standing history of Christian ethics in business, followed by an introduction that emphasizes the importance of ethical considerations and Pope Francis's encouragement of ethical practices. The report provides a background of Marriott International, tracing its origins and growth to become a global hotel chain. It then discusses biblical values such as love, compassion, and stewardship, and how these values are applied within the organization. The report highlights Marriott's practice of providing religious texts in hotel rooms and its decision to remove pay-per-view pornography. The report examines how these practices reflect the founder's religious beliefs and impact the company's decision-making process. It also includes lessons learned, emphasizing the importance of staying connected to one's roots and the positive impact of infusing biblical values into business. The report concludes by reiterating the importance of integrating biblical ethics into business and the contributions of Christian scholars to business and economic methods.

Running head: TITLE OF PAPER IN CAPS 1
Paper Title Capitalized and Centered
Name of Student
Institution Affiliation

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Contents
Abstract................................................................................................................................................3
Introduction.........................................................................................................................................4
Background of the organization.........................................................................................................4
Discussion of biblical values................................................................................................................5
Biblical Values in the organization.....................................................................................................6
Decision making of the organization and Religion............................................................................7
Lesson learned.....................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion............................................................................................................................................8

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Abstract
The long tradition of Christian ethics applied to economy and business. This is
happening since the thirteenth century and later on. To order to establish values, requirements
and directions for practice and a sequence of ideals that are important to the industry,
Christianity and purpose interweave. With 2000 years of history, Christian Spirituality was
incorporated in Christianity from the beginning but it has been a relatively recent application
to modern business. In this paper, a renowned organization betraying a Biblical value through
their business.

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Introduction
Economy, business and Christian ethics have a long-standing history, which requires
future developments. Christian spirituality is part of Christianity from the very beginning,
with 2000 years of history, but the application to modern business is rather recent, and
research into academia is still inaugurated. In addition, Pope Francis encourages us to work
towards what is central to business ethics. Other moral voices have been a great challenge. It
claims that it ensures that wealth is served and not governed by humanity (Hess & Cameron,
2006).
Background of the organization
The company that is selected for the project is Marriott International hotels. Marriott
International, Inc. is an international company that operates and maintains a wide range of
hotels and associated hospitality services in the United States. Marriott International Inc. was
developed by J Willard Marriott. The business is now headed by his successor, Bill Marriott,
CEO, and Arne Sorenson, President and CEO. The third-largest hotel chain in the world is
Marriott International Inc. (Bell, 2017). In 131 countries and territories worldwide, it sells 30
labels of 7,003 homes, 1,332, 826 beds, 2.035 of which are operated in 559,569 rooms, 4,905
with or approved in 756,156 rooms, 63 with or rented in 17,101 rooms.
Marriott and his spouse Alice Sheets Marriott founded a root beer shop in
Washington, D.C. in 1927. Eventually, Marriott extended its market to a chain business of
Hot Shoppes restaurant, and later on Hot Shoppes, Inc. was founded in 1953.
In 1957, the company launched its first hotel in Arlington, Virginia, at the Twin
Bridges Marriott Motor Hotel. Your second property, the Marriott Key Bridge, is the oldest
continuously operated hotel in Marriott Worldwide, in the Rosslyn area of the same city and

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celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2009. He handed over the duties of the CEO to Arne
Sorenson in March 2012 at the age of 80, taking over as Chairman of the Executive Board.
Throughout 1967, Marriott was rebroadcast as Hot Shoppes, Inc. Two theme parks were
opened in 1976 by the group (Fowler, 2017). Out of Chicago, there was the one Marriott's
Great America; in San Francisco, there was the other Marriott's Great America. All hotels
were closed by Marriott in 1984.
Discussion of biblical values
While there is a different approach to Christianity, in general, they have in common,
as well as the living Christian tradition and the exemplary innovations of disciples of Jesus,
the beliefs of Jesus of Nazareth (Christ) and of the Apostles contained in the Christian Bible.
The double commandment in love–respect towards God and neighbor–as well as the
emulation of compassion by Jesus are fundamental to Christian ethics; certain values,
concepts, and expectations are very important (Coogan et al., 2018).
The Bible and several philosophical legacies have developed Christian ethics in 2000
years. In the Middle Ages, scholasticism was born through Thomas Aquina, at a school of
theological and philosophical thought. By using Aristotelian philosophy as philosophical
guidance, he established Biblical principles. Throughout fact, human rights are expressly
expressed by Jews and Christians in the Ten Commandments or Decalogue (Barton, 2019).
They reflect a variety of moral obligations, including respect for human rights.
In conjunction with the second account of the creation, the concept of "stewardship"
of natural resources or "environmental control" is also found in the Bible. "Tilling" implies
planting and functioning, thus retaining means for care, securing and controlling, sustaining
and this includes a bond of shared obligation between humanity and nature, according to

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Pope Francis. Therefore, in the sense of responsible management, our' dominion' over the
universe should be understood more correctly (Liang, 2018).
Biblical Values in the organization
Marriott provided copies of the bible and Mormon Book in his hotel rooms for a long
time. It now reportedly fills up with religious texts for a minimum of 300,000 hotel rooms in
Starwood, under the umbrella of Marriott two years ago. Since the days of Hotel Chain
Founder John Willard Marriott, this is a common practice in Marriott hotels. Marriott was a
committed leader of Later-Day Saints ' Church of Jesus Christ, which runs counter to wider
industry trends of hotels that are targeted toward wealthier, irreligious consumers (Schmidt,
2020). Since the launch of his first hotel in the 1950s, the hotel chain has kept the rooms in
the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Unlike other companies that can provide their clients
with religious materials on request, Marriott requires its proprietors to provide the texts in
each room.
Since the late 19th century, hotels have been supplying Bibles in their rooms. Three
entrepreneurs worked to promote the Word one hotel room at a time. The activity was
improved. According to a 2016 study of the STR data and analytics company, hotels in the
USA slowly left religious materials in the spaces. In 2006, 95% of hotels supplied their
rooms with religious texts. Only 79 percent did, ten years later. Marriott is, therefore, one of
the few international hotel chains of its size to supply religious material by default in the
hotel rooms. In addition, the company announced several years ago that its hotel rooms
would stop offering pay-per-view pornography (Henson, 2018).
Decision making of the organization and Religion
The Decision-making process of the business is affected only in the way of the
relation between the customer and Marriott hotels. Not in all cases, they handle things with a

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religious point of view. The practice of biblical values comes from the founder of Marriott
International Inc. since the day they have started the business and what is happening now, is
that they are following the same path that was followed all the way back and changing a few
things along the way. Like as Marriott International’s business has spread across the globe,
throughout various countries they not only cling to Biblical values, they spread and be
resilient to other religions too. This can also be count as a biblical value empathy in some
way.
Lesson learned
One thing that we all can take note here, keeping strong connection to one’s roots is
not always easy, especially when you are a long-standing business, but keeping those
connections strong surely can give strength to go a long way in the business, along with
Marriott International Inc. we can observe other companies who keep Biblical values infused
into their business, business-like Chick fill A, Forever 21, etc (Peach, Sauerwein & Sikkema,
2017). Furthermore, infusing God or Biblical values into the business should at all point be
considered a good thing as it really provides an extra positive layer to the business
infrastructure.
On another note, we have found out that the widening interest in business and
management Christian Ethics and Spirituality has recently led to a number of initiatives,
conferences, publications, and interest groups, the fruits of 20 centuries of personal and
community experience (Gregory, 2020).
Conclusion
It ultimately illustrates how a Biblical viewpoint should be incorporated into business
since so many industry graduates are influenced by strong ideas and well trained in
technological skills; however, sadly others exit the university without an ethical and moral

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experience that can guarantee that their knowledge and skills are utilized to support the
welfare of others and the greater good (Collins, 2019).
A variety of Christian scholars have made significant contributions to business and
economic methods as well as to the importance of Biblical ethics among The faithful not only
in recent times but over several decades. The discussion of important moral issues related to
business ethics has been conducted by Christian Churches, especially the Roman Catholic
Church, and individual scholars. However, essential ideas widely used for business ethics are
either embedded in the Christian tradition or have gained close attention (Motlagh, Jamali &
Ghoorchian, 2016).

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References
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