| This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009) |
Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person or cause.
Contents |
The practice of providing discounts, prizes, or other incentives to encourage continued patronage of a business. Generally, loyalty programs are considered less expensive to maintain than allowing customer defection or 'churn'.
The concept of loyalty is an important part of ethics. Plato originally said that only a man who is just can be loyal, and that loyalty is a condition of genuine philosophy. The philosopher Josiah Royce said it was the supreme moral good, and that one's devotion to an object mattered more than the merits of the object itself. Loyalty is a quality you look for in a friend.
Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24 NIV) Attempting to serve two masters leads to “double-mindedness” (James 4:8), undermining loyalty to a cause. James 5:2. The bible also speaks of loyal ones, which would be those who follow the bible with absoloute loyalty, as in "Precious in the eyes of Jehovah, is the death of his loyal ones", (Psalms 116:15)
Within hierarchies loyalty usually has to be given to authority.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
stock | retire | vm
Why are we here?
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
This page is cache of Wikipedia. History