I’ve only ever heard about The Lutheran Work Ethic as something negative but I recently talked to someone who saw it as one of the explanations for why Scandinavia has such high trust societies in workplaces.
The philosophy is “The Lutheran work ethic, rooted in Martin Luther's theology, defines secular labor as a "calling" (Beruf) and a divine act of service to the neighbor, rather than a means to earn salvation. It elevates ordinary work to a sacred status, encouraging diligence, stewardship, and community focus as ways to love others and express faith.”
Nowadays this is usually interpreted online as you have to work to have worth and it sorta stops there, but the woman I talked with also theorized that this is why it’s not just insulting but even illegal to distrust your employees to the point of drug testing them or setting traps for them to see if they’ll do the right thing here.
We’re not as religious as we used to be but our societies were build on the Lutheran faith and as such work is supposed to be for the greater good of our communities and to accuse us of not doing our divine part that we were hired to do is beyond insulting. You might as well call us a heretic. Businesses that were successful in other countries have failed in Scandinavia because they didn’t trust their employees enough and people quit.
This is not to diminish the negative sides to this sort of work ethic but it was an interesting view of it I hadn’t thought about before. Over the years I’ve had many different employers and while some were bigger sticklers for the rules than others, their general attitude has definitely been more on the “as long as you get your job done I don’t really care how or when” side.
