Amazon has recently gotten itself in a little bit of hot water.

And by “hot water,” I mean their elaborate, decade-long corporate espionage project was blown wide open by The Wall Street Journal in the middle of a massive antitrust lawsuit against the company.

To make a long story short, Amazon ran an international shell company called “Big River Services International” that created brands, purchased discount products, and sold said products through various rival platforms and logistics services, in order to gain access to private information, benchmarks, and rival innovations before these things became publicly available.

It isn’t a fabulous look for the e-commerce giant.

Yes, all serious brands do research on their competitors. Walmart executives take a spin through Target on occasion, and they pay close attention to press releases, real estate purchases, etc. This is legal, prudent, and no problem. The line between research and corporate espionage gets crossed when a company intentionally misrepresents itself in order to gain access to not-publicly-available information. Anyone can log onto eBay and see how the process works to buy a product; not everyone can attend eBay’s Las Vegas seller’s convention, where top vendors are rewarded for the business they bring in with information about coming changes to the platform and have the opportunity to ask top executives about eBay’s strategy and proprietary numbers.

It brings up two important questions for Christian business owners:

1) Is it ethical to spy on competitors for the sake of competitive advantage?

2) How can we stop our competitors from doing the same thing to us?

Is It Ethical to Spy?

Jesus’ Golden Rule is well known in Christian circles: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Lesser known is the Jewish tradition called the “silver rule,” which postulates the other side of the coin: “Do not do to others that which is hateful to you.”

In other words, the mere fact that we ask question number 2 ought to give us insight into the answer to question number 1. We don’t want others to connive and spy on us, so we shouldn’t do that either.

Now, competition, by its very nature, involves striving against someone else. If you are engaged in a friendly boxing match, you are not being immoral by striking the other man in the face while trying to avoid being struck yourself. That’s the game, after all, and you want him to play well, so you ought to play well also. But “the game” of business does not necessarily involve driving each other out of business at all costs. Boxing is a zero-sum game because there can only be one winner. Business is not that way – a win for you does not necessarily mean a loss for someone else.

“Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves” is a good general rule for life. As business leaders, we need to be prudent, innovative, and even clever. If that means keeping tabs on the competition, so be it. But we have to admit that we go too far in our zeal for success when competition means lying or misrepresenting ourselves.

Christians can honor Christ when they fight, but this isn’t love or war – so let’s fight fair. Business is a gentleman’s agreement.

How Can We Keep From Being Spied On?

First of all, we have to be pragmatic. We live in a digital age, and computers are a big part of what we do every day in most of our industries. That said, if the computer is on a network, it is vulnerable to being hacked. Bigger companies face the prospect of ransomware attacks, while smaller players can still fall prey to identity theft, data theft, or other forms of intellectual property theft. You wouldn’t leave your storefront unlocked after hours, so why would you not invest in some sort of cybersecurity protection?

Secondly, we have to be the type of people that evoke loyalty. There is an old story about how China’s enemies shouldn’t have ever been able to breach the Great Wall, yet it was done many times because a disloyal guard was bribed by the enemy. Peter’s epistles talk about being above reproach so that even if a charge is brought against us, the accuser seems foolish because others can see our righteous ways. Paul says to seek to live peaceably with all men. You can’t control others, but you can be a good, caring person who lifts people up – and suddenly, the threat of employee sabotage goes down. This brings up a wonderful side-effect of being obedient to God’s way, as revealed in the scriptures and specifically in the teaching of Jesus: It is, in the long term, good business.

Third, we have to admit that we live in a world that values openness and transparency, and there is a lot of expectation from the market that companies should not hold secrets. Whether that is right or not is a discussion for another day, but it’s worth mentioning that it is. Are there ways that your business is overly reliant on something staying secret? How could you run your business so that your secret getting out wouldn’t ruin you? Certainly, some things should always remain private – customer data, for instance – but is there a way to grow the pie rather than just fighting over pieces of it? Home Depot and Lowes, for example, have realized that rather than focus on trying to outdo each other, it makes more sense to place their stores right next to each other, trusting that the larger footprint of the hardware/construction supply industry in a city will turn into more business for both of them. (This is, in part, known as the “Cluster” strategy.)

TL;DR

Amazon got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, and for Christians in business, we should never find ourselves in that position. Prudent research becomes corporate espionage once fraud or bribery enters in, and Christians should have “no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” Meanwhile, putting cybersecurity protocols and programs into place is crucial in today’s digital economy, and each of us should strive to evoke loyalty from our employees and, whenever possible, grow the pie. A rising tide lifts all ships, after all.

Quick Hits

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• If inflation has you down already, just skip this article on the average impact of inflation on your income.
• Amazon has successfully increased its delivery speed for Prime customers in 60 key metro areas after a heavy investment in fulfillment.
• Relevant Magazine urges Christian workers and businesspeople to take the command to rest on the Sabbath seriously.
• The Wall Street Journal reports, “The Dream of Fed Rate Cuts Is Slipping Away.”
• Walmart is removing self-checkout from two of its stores due to theft. This is the most recent generalized trend of retail brands scaling back on self-checkout for the sake of security.