1. INTRODUCTION
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. It's easy to confuse longevity with loyalty. For
instance, for a few years someone ate at the same restaurant every week. To some it may have seemed that
he was a loyal patron; however, nothing could have been further from the way he felt. Their food was bad, he
complained about it to anyone who would listen and he only returned to this restaurant because it was near
his home and stayed open late. The very day another restaurant opened up nearby was the last day he ever
ate there. The point is that you need to scratch below the surface to find out whether someone is loyal or not.
This concept of loyalty applies to employees as well