[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Zepf edited.jpg” caption=”Thomas Zepf, a second-year commerce student at the DeGroote School of Business, wrote The Art of Work. Photo by Susan Bubak.”]

The Art of War, Sun Tzu's famous military treatise, has long been praised as the definitive work on military strategies and tactics. While The Art of War is often applied to business, Thomas Zepf, a second-year commerce student at the DeGroote School of Business, took the application in another direction and wrote a book titled The Art of Work.

Zepf's book is a treatise of good business practice. He sums up his philosophy as, “Doing what's right, what's true makes good business sense.” In an era where the business world is marred with corporate scandals, his goal is to prove that “you can be a good person and be profitable.”

Zepf interviewed business leaders and studied the philosophies of Aristotle and the Tao to develop his guide. In the end he says it's all about common sense. He writes in the book, “Many of us today share these same thoughts because they are a natural reaction to the problems of our times.”

However, despite Zepf's common sense approach, he was unable to find other authors who espoused the same philosophy. So, after surveying various bookstores and noticing the gap, he decided to fill the void. The result, The Art of Work.

“The Art of Work can bring out the best worker in every man and woman by endowing them with an adaptable and discerning worker's approach designed for practical use in everyday business,” he explains.

Zepf purposefully avoided giving readers to do lists. Instead, he focused on providing guiding principles and changing people's attitudes.

“I didn't write this book so that people would work more. I wrote this book so that people would work as efficiently and as effectively as possible,” he says. “People are most successful when they profit not only themselves, not only their company, but also the society they are a part of.”

For Zepf, business is central to society.

“To me, it is the field where you can do the most. I want to make a difference, and you have to do that in the way the world works. The world we are in is a business world right now.”