HIGH SPIRITS: Minding Our Business
Aitken, Jonathan
HIGH SPIRITS JONATHAN AITKEN nding Our Business DOES CORPORATE AMERICA ENJOY public respect and a good reputation for high principles built on sound ethical and spiritual values?...
...He supports bringing faith into the workplace, sometimes by evangelism, always by example...
...As I started to identify some of the other Laity Lodge regulars I realized that I had stumbled into a remarkable gathering of influence and excellence...
...They are as old as ancient coinage and they occur everywhere...
...But to give one glimpse of the quality of the proceedings I would highlight the session in which Steve Reinemund, the chairman and Jonathan Aitken, The American Spectator's `High Spirits" columnist, is the author of seven books, including Nixon: A Life...
...These qualities, often admired and even envied around the world, have been known to serious foreign observers of this country for decades...
...As my limousine glided up to the conference venue, first impressions suggested that the weekend would be what Australians call "a bit of a bludge...
...HIGH SPIRITS J O N A T H A N A I T K E N nding Our Business DOES CORPORATE AMERICA ENJOY public respect and a good reputation for high principles built on sound ethical and spiritual values...
...preacher, and ardent advocate of "servant leadership," since the 1960s...
...Although your columnist could have fun exposing the hypocritical journalistic and political criticism of the U.S...
...No, just an amateur," someone replied...
...THE MAN WHO HAD succeeded in assembling some 200 participants of this calibre was 76-year-old Howard E. Butt, president of the Laity Lodge Foundation...
...In pagan Europe a prominent businessman who championed such a philosophy would invite ridicule and be regarded as a crank...
...The Enrons, Tycos, WorldComs, and other reprehensible sagas of corporate wrongdoing have created a bad international image even though much of the overseas media reporting of them is tainted at best with Schadenfreude (joy at the misfortunes of others) and at worst with a bad case of the pot calling the kettle black...
...Steven S. Reinemund, chairman and CEO PepsiCo...
...These two words convey the atmosphere of the whole weekend, although there was plenty of laughter and conviviality around too...
...Debra S. Waller, chairman and CEO Jockey International...
...Even when a business leader's faith has to be kept private in the workplace out of sensitivity to employees of other religions or of none, Butt argues that the beliefs of a chairman or CEO will set a tone which guides the whole corporation's position and performance by having faith-based foundations built on spiritual and ethical values...
...So did the announced themes of the conference which included lofty but amorphous phrases such as "the high calling of work," "servant leader-ship," and "restoring trust...
...These attitudes are refreshingly different from the European tendency (supremely the European Union's tendency) to sweep scandals under the carpet, punish whistle-blowers instead of fraudsters, and, on a massive scale inside the EU capital of Brussels, condone institutional corruption by silence...
...They were brought home to me with a new focus at a recent conference I attended in Palm Beach, Florida, organized by the Laity Lodge Leadership Forum...
...There was no laughter and much sadness about the damage that has recently been done to the image of American business by a handful of brigands and cowboys—most of whom are now getting their comeuppance from various sheriffs...
...The first sign that I might have underestimated the seriousness of the proceedings came from the after-dinner violinist...
...Well, you wouldn't think so if you read the bad press it has been getting in "Old Europe" and many other parts of the world...
...Butt Grocery Company (better known to Texans as HEB supermarkets...
...But what is different about American business felonies of the 21st century is a willingness, indeed a zeal, to prosecute, clean up, change, and learn as a result of recent corporate catastrophes...
...Thomas I. Morgan, CEO Hughes Supply...
...businessmen are an amoral hunch of ruthless robber barons hell-bent on ripping off their shareholders, falsifying figures, wrecking the environment, and exploiting the Third World is of course an absurd caricature...
...The topics covered included problems in areas such as corporate governance, executive compensation, exploitation of Third World countries, the responsibility of the food and drink industry for the growth of obesity, and the balance of faith, work, values, and leisure in the lifestyle of a top executive...
...The superb food, exquisite wines, free afternoons for tennis, golf, or swimming, and the far from uncomfortable surroundings of the Ritz-Carlton hotel all contributed to this relaxed feeling...
...In faith-respecting Am-erica these ideas are taken seriously enough for eminent chairmen and CEO's of Fortune 500 companies to take a weekend out of their busy schedules in order to discuss them in depth.'NDER THE OFF THE RECORD ground rules which rightly apply to Laity Lodge Forum weekends I am not able to quote from the many fascinating speakers and discussants to whom I was privileged to listen...
...This means a laid-back vacation masquerading as purposeful duty...
...If the Laity Lodge Leadership Forum had been open to the world, the world would have been impressed...
...Thomas L. Phillips, former chairman and CEO Raytheon...
...In his view business leaders who are committed Christians have a duty of service to the Lord, to their shareholders, to their employees, and to the wider public...
...MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49...
...Drayton McLane, owner of the Houston Astros...
...Without being in the least pious or pretentious Steve Reinemund answered his interrogators so thoughtfully that the prevailing impression from the interview was one of gravitas and responsiveness...
...Nevertheless some of the mud from recent scandals has stuck...
...For within Corporate Am-erica, warts and all, there is a solid core of old-fashioned virtue, altruism, and principle...
...Yet the response of the business community is emerging in clearer and more thoughtful form than most critics have realized...
...He played Kreisler's Schon Rosmarin followed by the 2nd movement of Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole with such artistry that I asked if he was a famous virtuoso of the concert hall circuit...
...As I settled down to a hard afternoon of sunbathing before the opening night banquet, I reckoned I was in for a pleasant Palm Beach sojourn of agreeable but undemanding inactivity...
...The only non-American present, apart from myself, was Lord Brian Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and former head of No...
...For by a combination of compliance, conscience, and faith the serious players in the big league corporations of America seem determined to clean house, restore confidence, and move to a higher ground built on stronger moral values...
...vice-chairman of the H.E...
...He was not just good...
...C. William Pollard, former chairman Servicemaster...
...Business leaders who are committed Christians have a duty of service to the Lord, to their shareholders, to their employees, and to the wider public...
...and David M. Weekly, chairman Weekly Homes...
...Robert Mosbacher, president, Mosbacher Energy...
...Don't let's pretend that the squeaky-clean financial arenas of the Middle East, Asia, and Europe are piously devoid of similar outrages...
...As the name Laity Lodge implies, Butt believes that lay ministry should have an active and expanded role in spreading the Gospel...
...For these regulars included: Ralph S. Larsen, former chairman and CEO Johnson and Johnson...
...He is Stephen Clapp, winner of the first Naumburg Award in Chamber Music, dean of the Juilliard School J O N A T H A N A I T K E N of New York, and a regular at Laity Lodge...
...CEO of PepsiCo, submitted himself to a searching interview by Douglas Holladay of Park Avenue Equity Partners and then to general questioning from the audience...
...10 Downing Street policy unit advising Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher...
...The notion that U.S...
...corporate scene that is all too often a cover for deeper anti-Americanism, it seems more 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 200S appropriate to deploy not the bludgeon but the rapier of Oscar Wilde who said: "Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue...
...theologian...
...Armand M. Nicholi, Harvard professor of psychiatry...
Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 4
