19,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
2025 Axiom Business Book Award Winner—Business Ethics
Shortlisted, The Business Book Awards—Leadership
Discover a groundbreaking blueprint for the future of business
In an era marked by increasing profiteering and inequality, The Ethical Imperative: Leading with Conscience to Shape the Future of Business offers a compelling alternative vision—one where companies champion the collective prosperity of employees, shareholders, and communities. Author Andrew Cooper, a distinguished executive, leverages over twenty academic studies and fifty years of research to challenge the status quo. He exposes the critical threat of public disengagement from businesses and institutions, urging a departure from outdated, profit-only models that harm corporations, consumers, and communities alike.
You'll find:
- Five actionable strategies you can employ immediately to transform your organization into a beacon of trust and social responsibility
- Techniques for navigating the age of social media and creating an authentic, honest, and sustainable brand
- Actionable tools to help your organization move beyond exclusively short-term profit-driven models of growth
Packed with engaging stories, practical tools, and insights from a seasoned leader determined to revolutionize corporate culture, this book is an essential resource for business managers, executives, entrepreneurs, and anyone aspiring to infuse their commercial endeavors with ethical principles.
Join Andrew Cooper in shaping a future where business is synonymous with compassion, equity, and enduring prosperity. The Ethical Imperative is more than a book—it's a movement towards the next phase of corporate evolution. Be part of this transformative journey.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 473
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction: The Conflagration
Notes
PART I: The Burning House
1 Forgotten Towns
Shadows of Dutch Tulip Bulbs
Notes
2 Forgotten People
Searching for Light
The Upward Pressure of Stakeholders
The Power of Corporate Money
The Corporation Next Door
Notes
3 Adapt Today, Thrive Tomorrow
Teleportative Solutioning
What Innovation Says About Your Speed
To Beard or Not to Beard
To Kneel or to Stand
GOOD CHICKEN
Notes
PART II: The Conscientious Executive
4 Move Beyond Comfort
Lip Service Versus Real Alignment
Leveling the Paying Field
Thump Your Tail
Meet the Tough Standard
Notes
5 Good Habits and the Price of Renewal
Rooted by Legacy
Loyalty Dividends
On My Airplanes
Values Drive Results
Recession-Proof Relationships
A Willingness to Change
Notes
6 Dig Deep for Inspiration
New Contexts Challenging Old Paradigms
Motivation and the Hungry Rat
The Hierarchy of Inspirational Needs
Titans to Remember
Notes
7 Value the Invisible
Corporate Parallax
Think Long-Term
Deathly Myopic
Notes
8 Attenborough's Lesson
Secrets from the Breakfast Club
Benefits of Bidirectionality
The Benefits of Diversity
Open Systems Are Better
Grace to Be Uncomfortably Open
Notes
9 Buckner's Law
The Real McCoy
From Pecans to Patents
High-Performance Gardening
The Leadership Power Curve
Notes
PART III: Level Up the Leadership Power Curve
10 Move 1: Dynamic Omnidirectional Relationship Investment
Nontraditional Archetypes
Strategic Currency
Use of Currency, an Example
Essential and Personal
Notes
11 Move 2: Human Capital Investment
Understand the State of Play
Instability Costs
Total Value
20% Tithe
Compassion
Notes
12 Move 3: Habitat Discordance
Play the Long Game
Feedback Loops
Notes
13 Move 4: The Maximization Default
A Lesson from Johns
Decluttering
A Lesson from U.S. Grant
It's About You
Note
14 Move 5: A Reliable Brand
A Lesson from Cole
What SEALs Know About Resilience
Generational Demands for Values
Notes
15 Virtuous Cycles
Organizational Improvement
Communities and Virtuous Cycles
It's a Journey
Increasing Returns
Giving Back
Take Action Locally
Tomorrow Is Now
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 15
Table 15.1 Power curve comparison.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Stakeholder optimization.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Ideation in a diverse open system.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 McCoy oil cup.
Figure 9.2 The 201 patent.
Figure 9.3 The landing rails.
Figure 9.4 McKinsey's theoretical power curve.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Plotting relationships.
Figure 10.2 360 relationship investment.
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction: The Conflagration
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
Pages
iii
iv
v
ix
x
xi
1
2
3
4
5
7
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
53
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
231
232
233
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
Foreword by DEBORAH POLLACK-MILGATE
THE PARITY PODCAST
ANDREW C.M. COOPER
THE ETHICAL IMPERATIVE
LEADING with CONSCIENCETO SHAPE THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS
Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:
Names: Cooper, Andrew C. M., author.
Title: The ethical imperative : leading with conscience to shape the future of business / Andrew C.M. Cooper.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024020704 (print) | LCCN 2024020705 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394274833 (hardback) | ISBN 9781394274857 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394274840 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Business ethics. | Social responsibility of business. Leadership.
Classification: LCC HF5387 .C6666 2024 (print) | LCC HF5387 (ebook) | DDC 174/.4–dc23/eng/20240601
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024020704
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024020705
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © steheap/Adobe StockAuthor Photo: Courtesy of the Author
To my mother, Beatrice Devean Cooper. You are my guiding light and the embodiment of leadership in its purest form.
And to the late Dinisa Folmar and Wilhelmina Nesbitt. Never forgotten.
Foreword
It is fitting that The Ethical Imperative begins by describing a conflagration, a burning house in which a family member dies. The burning house was a predictable consequence of years of neglect. One might say we find ourselves today in the moment just before the house catches fire. If we do not act at once, there will be demise. The conflagration is predictable. One might argue convincingly that portions of our house are already smoldering.
Yet Andy Cooper comes from a place of hope. While this hope may be naïve, my urgent wish is that it is not. We only know one thing for certain: the need for hope is profound. Andy's Ethical Imperative cannot guarantee success, but we know without the strategic vision he offers, we are stuck biding our time. Living in the moment, we are hopeful only that the next disaster—COVID, wildfires, gun violence—at least leaves our immediate family and friends unharmed. The instability and constant worry encourage us to retreat to our corners and hoard our resources for ourselves.
A corporation may choose to do the same, and lawfully so. We are stuck urging, but not compelling a company to care about community interests. Andy notes that a corporation's relentless pursuit of profits at the expense of the greater good may result in it collapsing in on itself. I couldn't agree more. The wish to avoid collapse may be what we need.
Thankfully, Andy also understands nuance. While Bernie Sanders rails on about “corporate greed,” Andy knows that the picture is more complex. Corporations do not have one essence, and they are, importantly, made up of human beings. Andy reminds us of the enormous treasures that are today's companies, and he knows that chastising companies into submission isn't productive.
Andy's approach is pragmatic, especially in the context of these United States. We may wish to solve our problems at the government level—one would have hoped that better building codes would have saved his cousin—and yet our anti-government strain runs deep and gets in the way of our ability to solve problems quickly. It is fitting that Andy would look to an entrepreneurial, corporate-led effort. It is not clear companies will take up this challenge, but we have seen increasing efforts.
Andy offers a path for those who are ready to act. The strength in his approach is its focus on both the corporate institution and the human beings that make up the institution. Growing relational assets is groundbreaking in its recognition that relational growth must be nurtured throughout the corporate institution and its lifecycle. The path does not end at promotion. Human capital investment is necessary to maximize corporate value. Employees are invested in their companies when they are themselves valued and challenged to grow and contribute according to their unique talents. Importantly, nurturing relationships and freeing up employees to contribute to the institution does not overlook Strengthening on a program, which ensures that feedback is routine and built into all levels of the organization. Corporate dynamism may be Andy's most significant contribution yet because “malleability” in a world where the challenges appear different every day is critical.
Lastly, as an IP attorney myself, I hold in my heart a special affinity for Brand Integrity. To me, a company's identity as an organization must permeate at every level within, to stream outward to consumers. It's the glue of the organization that keeps everyone moving toward a common goal. The Ethical Imperative is well-advised to be cognizant of the power of this glue.
I have known Andy for more than a few years now, and know him to be engaged, thoughtful, hopeful, forward-looking, and never at rest. I share his confidence in Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Thank you, Andy, for giving us a much-needed framework just when we need it.
—Deborah Pollack-Milgate
The Parity Podcast
“… America has lost the moral vision she may have had, and I'm afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised … I fear I am integrating my people into a burning house.”
– Martin Luther King Jr., a conversation with Harry Belafonte
Introduction: The Conflagration
The structure, they say, went up like a match. It had been grandfathered through generations of building codes, and on February 9, 2021, at 4:30 a.m., it became a mushroom cloud above the small neighborhood of Sandhill in Walterboro, South Carolina. The smoke coming from the 100 block of Ann Court could be seen for miles.1
Its occupant was nowhere to be found.
The Colleton County fire department later discovered that my cousin Meme was inside. Her government name was Wilhelmina Young Nesbitt.2 Meme had naturally long and silken black hair that hung low down her back. Her piercing hazel eyes were deep and inviting, and her cheekbones were raised and proud such that she appeared to be smiling even when she was not. But from what I can remember, she was almost always sad.
At only 53 years old, Meme became the first fire fatality of the year in the small town of Walterboro—population 5,400. Perhaps it was failing infrastructure. They say the roof of the home, an ugly umber color that stood out from its neighbors, had already collapsed in the rear of the building before the firefighters arrived. Or, perhaps, it was something else.
Officially, the death was an accident, but the truth is that Meme died from a maelstrom of failures. The community she grew up in, my community, offered few opportunities for her. Few jobs with health benefits, poor mental health services, and a virtually nonexistent state social safety net that created a void that nearby relatives could not fill.
When I was a boy, Meme came to church dressed from head to toe in black. In our small, Free Will Baptist Church, her attire was somewhat unusual for a “regular” service. There, in my grandfather's church, she veiled herself, walked to the pulpit, and kneeled in front of the congregation while chanting gibberish just as Pastor Gregory Clayton (also my cousin) reached a crescendo in his preaching. My father, Reverend A. L. Cooper, who then went by his initials to avoid confusion with me, sat on the rostrum with other clergy offering a searing gaze of concern.
Pastor Clayton stopped cold in the middle of his sermon. I can't remember the topic, but I was about nine years old then, and probably wasn't listening anyway. What subsequently ensued was over an hour of direct, corporate prayer and “laying of hands” for Meme—the entire church together. One minister suggested we “cast out the demon within her.” I can remember thinking, even at a young age, that the thing Meme actually needed in addition to prayer was serious mental health intervention, the kind that was not available in Walterboro.
The episode, and Meme's untimely demise, is emblematic of systemic failure. She came from a poor community. Local services were inadequate and even her home buckled under the neglect of resources. She and I were both products of the same, undervalued social construct. We were America's working poor and therefore unseen. But, as Michael Caine's character says in the movie The Dark Knight Rises, “Sometimes the pit sends something back.” Unlike Meme, I made it out. And, three decades later it occurred to me that, in the panoply of preventable deaths, I have a real opportunity to save people like Meme.
Since the day I left my family's single-wide trailer on Viola Court, I could not stop thinking about my reasons for leaving. All that I loved was in Walterboro, but all that I needed was not. So, I left for Washington DC; then to Atlanta, Georgia; then to Kansas City, Missouri; and on to Louisville, Kentucky—each place yielding a credential and a host of life lessons. But Walterboro was never far from my thoughts. At 32, I became the youngest general counsel of an American airline, and subsequently a senior lawyer for the world's largest social media company. Each turn focused my heart on the important role corporations can, and do, play in our daily lives.
In 2018, when I joined the corporate leadership team of United Parcel Service Airlines, I had no clue that pandemic, social unrest, and even political turmoil would be immense challenges to navigate during my tenure. But there, in the thick Kentucky bluegrass—through lockdowns, social anxiety stoked by the killing of Breonna Taylor, and political unrest emanating from Washington DC—I cut my teeth on leadership. First, I had no employees to supervise, then I had three, then eight, then 30, and then I joined a leadership team of 20,000. And each day I saw a little bit of Wilhelmina in each of my employees. Some worked mightily to make ends meet, others to get an education or health coverage, and still others to secure a promotion to buy a modest home and achieve the proverbial American dream. Each relied on the possibility borne out of work, and it was my job to lead for them.
America's Millennial generation, my generation, are often maligned as entitled and whiny, but in 2020 we became the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, and I believe we have an urgent message for America's corporate leaders. The message is clear to me because I have been on the messaging apps, received the direct messages on social media, and engaged on a consistent basis with my contemporaries, many of whom are inclined to burn down the edifice of America's free enterprise system as swiftly as Meme's house. If we want to preserve the very best of American enterprise, then corporate America must become better, and soon.
There is no shortage of critics who would prefer to see the enormous wealth of private firms diminished. To be sure, they point to valid examples of greed and excess. But they overlook the enormous social good and social mobility enabled by enterprise. I have a front-row seat to the good companies can do, if only they will. For example, during the 2019–2021 COVID-19 pandemic, I worked with thousands of UPS workers around the globe to deliver over 1 billion vaccines during the unprecedented global health crisis.3 It was a feat no government could accomplish alone. More catastrophes like COVID are on the horizon as climate change, natural habitat destruction, and ecological disasters present challenges that only large and competent organizations will have the capacity to solve.
On July 19, 2022, the United Kingdom recorded a temperature of 40.3°C (104.5°F). At the time, it was the highest ever recorded temperature in UK history.4 But it was foretold. Five years earlier, the International Monetary Fund urgently reported that domestic policies alone cannot fully insulate countries from the consequences of climate change. “Higher temperatures,” the IMF stated, “will push the biophysical limits of ecosystems, potentially triggering more frequent natural disasters, fueling migration pressures and conflict risk.”5 Today, western governments appear impotent, and the “hope and change” of the fleeting Obama years have lost their luster, leaving young people to turn to extreme economic ideas. This is the environment in which I assumed corporate leadership, and the need to level up could not be clearer.
Millennials, like me, have come of age in a conflagration of crises—not unlike Meme. In this environment, profits and positive earnings raise more questions about how results were achieved, rather than the results themselves.
Organizations that navigate what authors William Strauss and Neil Howe call the next generational “turning” will either have a thriving business or go up in flames like 100 Ann Court. It is an existential challenge, and the solutions require a new breed of leader willing to look inside the besieged homes of consumers to see, as Jack Swigert famously said on the Apollo 13 mission, “Houston we have a problem.” Today, we need corporate leaders to make decisions with greater appreciation of impact, and I need you to be one of them—a conscientious leader who appreciates the human element in a total cost equation.
When I was younger, my father and I were on a long drive together. We were leaving our home in coastal South Carolina, to a town in the interior; one of those places where there was only one church and a gas station. We would often get into philosophical debates on the road.
My dad was a cynic. He contended that young people would end up just like the generations before them. Millennials, in his view, would not change much about the world. Of course, I couldn't let that go. An acolyte of Gene Roddenberry's work (the maker of Star Trek), I was programmed from a young age to be hopeful.
I responded with visceral anger that Millennials would change all of the things that were wrong with the world: racism, hate, inequality. My dad just smiled at me and shook his head disapprovingly. “You'll see,” he said. “You'll be just like all the other generations before you. Just keep living.”
Time will tell who is right—my dad or me. Or, perhaps, neither of us is right. A split decision is a possible outcome as well. Still, the weight of this question hangs over the entirety of society as we approach a generational junction. The direction we turn will have major implications for America's corporations and free enterprise as we know it.
In the American economy, the start of the twenty-first century can be characterized as a time of rising inequality, where those living in the Walterboros of the world struggle to maintain their financial footing. Social mobility is giving way to a permanent underclass. Corporate leaders seemingly abandon any pretense of responsibility to society in favor of shareholder value at any cost. This has led to a series of corporate scandals and an accelerating decline in public trust. Change is urgently needed, but it will only come about if corporate leaders are willing to, as Millennials say, level up.
The remainder of the twenty-first century will be critical for the future of capitalism in America as generational divides widen over the appropriate role of corporations in society, and government's oversight of them. It remains to be seen whether corporate leaders are up to the challenge.
Something must change but this much is clear: the answer does not lie in abandoning our free enterprise system, but rather improving it so that all members of society have an opportunity to benefit. This will require corporate leaders to listen to the concerns of younger generations and implement solutions that help our businesses improve in the face of rapid generational and social change. If you want your business to thrive through this tumultuous period of change, then this book is for you. The preservation of capitalism depends on mitigating the outcomes that have left small towns and rural communities reeling from underinvestment, lack of education, and poor job opportunities. This whirlwind of issues seeds many untenable social outcomes like isolation, resentment, and depression that have huge implications for domestic tranquility, health, labor movements, and population growth.
This book continues a 20-year conversation with my father. It is also written for those, like him, who I've met in corporate leadership through the years and who understandably have genuine skepticism about the imminent and fundamental change upon our society, and the dangers that it could pose if we do not respond appropriately to the challenges. Like Meme, there were breadcrumbs along the path of life that signaled a need for help, but few listened, and the result was tragic.
So, I have two objectives for this book. First, to influence new generations to view business as a transformative force for positive change rather than an immovable obstruction to progress. And, second, to influence business leaders to think conscientiously about a corporation's role in local communities and our broader society.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part, Chapters 1–3, explores the conditions fueling a sociological fire spreading across American society, and the urgent need for corporate leaders to respond. Part II, Chapters 4–9, outlines who the conscientious executive is, and what qualities will be needed to address the challenges detailed in Part I. Finally, Part III, Chapters 10–15, discusses five crucial moves for a leader to level up, and how to strengthen the qualities enumerated in Part II for effectively responding to the urgency of the moment described in Part I.
The hostility felt by those shut out of the American dream is like faulty electrical wiring inside an old wooden house. But the house need not be demolished. Capitalism need not be supplanted wholesale. Free markets need not be subsumed by planned economies. With proper care and attention, investment and compromise, even old things can be made anew. This book explores ways to rewire outdated and perilous corporate behaviors and how we may reinvigorate the moral leadership that the future demands of its leaders.
Notes
1
. Rivera, R. and Bean, R. (2021). Woman killed, firefighter suffers burns in Colleton County house fire. WCSC (9 February).
https://www.live5news.com/2021/02/09/house-fire-kills-colleton-co/
.
2
. Brice Herndon Funeral Home. (2021). Wilhelmina “Meme” Young Nesbitt, Walterboro Live (15 February).
https://walterborolive.com/stories/wilhelmina-meme-young-nesbitt,33663
.
3
. UPS. (2021). UPS surpasses one billion COVID-19 vaccine delivery milestone, continues to deliver hope around the world. Press release (14 December).
https://about.ups.com/us/en/newsroom/press-releases/customer-first/vaccine-milestone-press-release.html
.
4
. Landier, M. (2022). U.K. heat wave,
The New York Times
(20 July).
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/07/19/world/uk-europe-heat-fires-weather#:~:text=Britain%20recorded%20a%20temperature%20of,the%20United%20Kingdom%20if%20confirmed
.
5
. Acevedo, S., Mrkaic, M., Pugacheva, E., and Topalova, P. (2017). The unequal burden of rising temperatures. IMF Blog (27 September).
https://blogs.imf.org/2017/09/27/the-unequal-burden-of-rising-temperatures-how-can-low-income-countries-cope/
.
PART IThe Burning House
“The world we know is gone. But keeping our humanity? That's a choice.”
– Dale, The Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 11
1Forgotten Towns
A forgotten town—that's how I describe the South Carolina hamlet where I was born. It's so small I usually say Walterboro is a stone's throw from Charleston rather than pinpoint its location. Even so, it used to be a more vibrant setting in the countryside. When I drive east from my home in Atlanta, Georgia, I pass through forests, farmland, and tiny towns before reaching the outskirts of Walterboro. Then the scenery starts to deteriorate as I journey past a funeral home, an abandoned gas station, Interstate 95, a Walmart Supercenter, and many fast food restaurants to get downtown. When I finally cross the old railroad tracks, I see shuttered mills sitting in the empty industrial park, a constant reminder that all the good jobs disappeared decades ago.
It wasn't always that way, of course. No town is founded in hopes that one day it will fall into a state of decay and disrepair. Originally known as Walterborough, my hometown sprang up in 1783 as a summer retreat for White farmers trying to put considerable distance between themselves and the threat of malaria that was racing through the countryside unchecked. Like most of the American South, it became better known once a county courthouse was constructed in 1820, a landmark that stands to this very day in Colleton County. The local courthouse still attracts the occasional visitor to town, most recently because of the trial of disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh, convicted in March 2023 of murdering his wife and son. Netflix made a docuseries about the Murdaugh murders. But the three-part limited series only mentioned the town in passing; alas, that's the kind of place it is.
When the Civil War ended and emancipation came to the South, the Black community built its own traditions and establishments in Walterboro. I was born in one of those predominantly black communities at what was then a regional hospital (now essentially a limited-service clinic).
Workers moved to Walterboro when a railroad brought industry to the town. My grandfather Harvell was one of them. He and my grandmother Viola gained title to a small patch of unwanted land next to the railroad and built a wood-framed house that would later anchor the neighborhood called Sandhill, a reference to the unpaved sand and dirt easements peppering the hilly area. There they raised six children, including my mother, Beatrice, who attended the same schools during integration that I would later attend some 30 years later. Harvell built a church on a small plot and gave the church the land as an offering, and he then divided the rest amongst his children—each of whom would have two to four children of their own. My mother, Harvell's middle daughter, placed a single-wide trailer on her parcel in front of Harvell's house, and that is where I came to know life, in the shadows of a church steeple and my grandmother's front porch.
Walterboro's most notable addition to the twentieth century was the airstrip built in the 1930s that made the town home to the Walterboro Army Airfield, one of a vast network of army air training facilities during World War II.
Even the big city feel came to Walterboro for a time when Interstate 95 was built through the town in the 1960s, making it a resting place for those living on the East Coast in big cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC headed to Florida and back up again.
To be sure, Walterboro is not forgotten by those of us who love the people and the place. But for corporate America, my hometown offers few incentives for investment beyond fast food for interstate travelers. To really thrive, in most cases you must leave—and so I did. I aspired to have more.
Many towns like Walterboro dot the landscape of the Deep South: Yemassee, St. George, Cottageville, Smoaks, Ehrhardt—towns seemingly forgotten. But for a poor boy like me, growing up between the Spanish moss and sweetgum trees of the low country, the existence of these places was both an inconvenient truth and an invaluable reality.
The railways that ran through town in the early 1900s served the corporate interests of Rockland Bleach and Dye Works, as well as other construction, lumber, and turpentine businesses. Because these industries needed manual laborers, working class folks of all races were able to find some work in Walterboro for a time. Grandpa Harvell spent some time dipping turpentine, which ultimately helped him buy a few acres of land near the railroad. It wasn't the best land. The harsh sand and poor earth made better sandbags than turnips. And the presence of pollution from nearby factories made the surrounding area prime real estate for dumping waste of all kinds.
In addition, the existence of the railway meant the ever-present potential of disaster—a fact that became all too real for the people of East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3, 2023, which saw one of the worst train derailment disasters in U.S. history. East Palestine, population 4,700, is another Walterboro. A place so often forgotten and frequently home to the poorest Americans. But, despite the risk of disaster, the exploitative use of the area by corporate interests, and marginally good earth, it was still home. It was what we could afford to call home.
In many ways, an early alignment of corporate interests was integral to my family story. The capital from the rail industry led to a meaningful opportunity for a poor family to acquire a homestead, though by the time I was born in the 1980s, Rockland and subsequent businesses had faltered, their discarded industrial complexes and mills arrayed the main arteries of Walterboro like dinosaur bones jutting from the sand.
My cousins and I would run up and down the now long-abandoned rails, playing and laughing as we tried not to fall. But as an adult, I saw them as a testament to how the capital project's failure had sapped Walterboro's economic development, making it even more improbable for White and Black families alike to climb out of poverty.
As a corporate lawyer who has worked in and for some of the world's largest companies and law firms, I am captivated by the coexisting life and death of Walterboro's economy, having seen this story repeated in towns and cities across the nation. Corporate success fosters a mosaic of prosperity across the towns it touches, while its failure leaves a concomitant trail of dying communities. Walterboro is an exemplar of this unbroken story that plays on repeat across the decades of American history.
In some ways, the Walterboro railroad could be analogized to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline, a massive project that started in 1943. The project was a set of natural gas pipelines that ran through Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and all the way to New England, New York, New Jersey, and even West Virginia.
The biggest sections of the pipeline couldn't go through the big cities because they had too much sewage and subway infrastructure below ground. So, the backwoods towns played host to these massive industrial efforts. For brief periods of time, those little boroughs became boomtowns full of men needing places to live, food to eat, clothes, entertainment, company, everything that a small traveling army requires. Depending on the work conditions and the weather, sometimes workers would stay for six weeks, other times for half a year, but the boom always ended, and they moved on to the next staging point, leaving behind the people who had come to know prosperity for just a short while before it was snatched back from their grasp.
The breakdown between mighty corporate interests and regular folks who can barely be seen from corporate towers is a painful disparity to witness from both sides of the playing field. The clearer my view became of life when peering through a corporate lens, the more I felt like my own version of what sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild would call a stranger in a strange land. Was this the same America I was brought up in? Like many corporate leaders who hail from America's rural communities, I sense a cognitive dissonance; there is a constant tension between making quantitative decisions against those decisions' qualitative impact on real people. The notions of loyalty, of homecoming, of giving back to the town that raised you, the idea that “it takes a village”—they all seemed to vanish into thin air the farther I moved away from the place I called home. It irked me at first, then it began to fester as my scope of responsibility grew. And I wasn't alone in my discontent: my generational peers took to the streets in protest in 2020 and began to target not only social injustice, but the American free enterprise system as an organizing principle.
Despite my degree in economics, I would never consider myself an economist like Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, or Michael Hudson. They have written extensively on free-market economies and ways to make them work for everyone. I approach the topic, however, like Wilhelmina Nesbitt, as an observer and a subject of the system constructed for me. But, also, as a daily participant in a small part of the economic machine. With each passing day it becomes clearer—pressing even—that we embrace a new business model to win the future.
Increasingly common, widespread economic hardship and substantial inequality presage the demise of our current version of free enterprise. Like the burning of a house, it is a gradual process marked by several warning signs—precursor embers if you will. Capitalism has been a lynchpin of western economics for centuries, but its stability is by no means assured. The forces of political unrest, deep inequality, and economic collapse might be the harbingers of capitalism's undoing—small fires that may grow until everything is engulfed in flames. It may start with indicators such as decelerating financial mobility for young people and widespread scarcity among those living near the poverty line forcing abhorrent choices between food and medicine; while power is consolidated in tiny, insular groups of people and elite institutions. This process could even culminate in an outright rejection of today's economic orthodoxy—a revolt against the status quo fueled by disillusionment—and an embrace of alternative economics like central planning, which professes to redistribute wealth more fairly.
The first sign of a burning house is usually smoke. In terms of the worldwide economic system, the smoke is manifested in increasingly frequent financial crises and recessions. For example, between March 10, 2023, and May 1, 2023, a mere 52 days, the U.S. financial system experienced two seismic bank failures. First, Silicon Valley Bank failed after a bank run, marking the third-largest failure of a financial institution in U.S. history, and certainly the largest since the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Then, First Republic Bank was shuttered by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, and subsequently the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was appointed receiver. True, the economy has always experienced cycles of growth and decline, but in recent decades these cycles have steadily become more intense and frequent. Millennials, particularly, have experienced three recessions by the time we entered adulthood. We were often graduating, finding a job, and attempting to raise a family through economic hardship and uncertainty. Ours is a generation defined by instability at almost every critical life moment. Consider this: roughly 30% of all economic recessions in the last 70 years have occurred during our generation.
In contrast, there have been roughly 11 recessions since 1948, each impacting generations at different developmental stages. For example, the 2008 financial crisis, dubbed the Great Recession, occurred around the time Millennials were graduating high school or college. While the recession was hard on the 401(k) retirement portfolios of Generation X, who at the time were around 35, it was devastating for Millennials who were attempting to enter their first employment market. To many young people, these frequent sputters of the free market were an indicator of capitalism's fragile edifice.
The Great Recession sent shockwaves around the world as governments from all countries scrambled to address the economic catastrophe. Jobs for the working class evaporated, and faith in markets plummeted. Some governments surprisingly stepped up to the challenge with forward-thinking regulations and a little economic stimulus, which provided stability, until the 2020 pandemic. To be sure, there were calamities like the European debt crisis beginning in 2009, the Chinese stock market crash in 2015, Brexit between 2016–2020, and the U.S. trade war with China in 2018. Had effective political will and leadership prevailed, these challenges could have been overcome.
As proverbial flames grow around this metaphorical house, ordinary people begin to feel the heat. Those without means will inevitably face difficulties due to widespread poverty and inequality in a society characterized by a yawning gap between the rich and poor. Labor markets stand to cause some of the most substantial problems as labor exploitation, unemployment, underemployment, low wages, and limited access to health care and education create a cascading problem for working people.
Eventually, the house catches fire. The smoke and heat now betray the existence of a raging inferno. The danger becomes easy to spot and manifests as a declining faith in institutions. This sobering tumult of disillusionment escalates into an explosive uproar for reform seen best expressed by public protests, insurrections, general strikes, and demands for change that seriously threaten social stability.
As the house fire reaches its climax, so too does the pressure for systemic change. For some, this could lead to a shift away from free enterprise toward various systems designed to enact crushing regulation and predictable outcomes as people seek more equitable and resource-efficient ways to organize society. In making this transformation, alternative economic models would undoubtedly arise. These systems could range from new modalities of ownership to novel democratic governance styles—empowered by advances in technology such as artificial intelligence—and further efforts to incentivize sustainable production practices. There is no guarantee that any of these changes will resolve the immense challenges that we face, but they may be seen as the only pathway to put out the fire and improve people's lives.
Prolonged economic distress is a perilous situation as it pushes society away from what exists into the arms of something more desperate. We may soon embark upon a voyage into the unknown if we allow this economic fire to rage on unchecked.
Shadows of Dutch Tulip Bulbs
If you were into computer games in the 2000s like I was, then you undoubtedly knew about The Sims. This incredibly successful game series has a wonderful backstory. A game designer named Will Wright struck inspiration for the game in 1991 when his home was destroyed by a terrible string of fires that struck Oakland, California. The fires claimed 25 lives and destroyed approximately 3,000 homes. When a dwelling is destroyed, the owner must replace everything that made the house a home, and Wright envisioned all that as a game experience. While The Sims is now a part of our collective cultural lexicon, Wright had a hard time selling the fact that the game was just a simulation of people experiencing real life. Wright was turned down a few times before Electronic Arts took a gamble on him and released the first game in 2000. By making the game like real life, casual gamers, and particularly female gamers, were attracted in numbers never seen before in the industry.
I spent hours in The Sims where my character could live in a mansion and go from one economic success to another. Back then I was far less certain about the course my life would take, thus gaming was a great escape. Inadvertently, the game enshrined the concept of leveling up in my mind. In gaming, “leveling up” is the process for gaining experience, skills, and abilities, or better tools to progress to more difficult challenges or to access previously unreachable places.
Who would have thought that a now ancient games series would reflect so remarkably on today's real-world corporate life? A career in the trenches of any major corporation is not unlike an avatar grinding out a daily task in a virtual world with the hopes of one day unlocking the ability to hire and fire other avatars! Seriously, though, today's corporate decision-makers also need to level up because yesterday's standard business paradigm is now obsolete.
Our behaviors have been exposed, for good and bad, by the vast means of information sharing now easily accessible from our cell phones. Corporate decisions that lack regard for the potentially exploitative nature of business operations, and its impacts on communities, are now a rallying cry for an entire generation of consumers. While some organizations are making great strides toward aligning their business models with community needs, too many are still using old strategies in a rapidly changing world.
META is gamer-speak for Most Effective Tactic Available. The term was first coined by military strategists, but it can be applied to any situation where the goal is to achieve the maximum possible effect with the limited resources available. In its simplest form, “meta” means using whatever works best, regardless of whether it is conventional or not. For example, in business, a meta approach might involve investing in a start-up that is using cutting-edge technology to enter or disrupt an established market. Crucially, meta practices are not about slavishly following established rules or doing things the way they have always been done. Instead, they are about finding the most effective way to achieve a goal, even if that means breaking the mold.
Today, I see corporate leaders forgetting that a meta approach is supposed to be agnostic of convention. For example, for decades a meta network planning strategy often involved bypassing small markets and towns in lieu of big cities, further reinforcing historical disparities between resource-rich metropolises, and often starved small towns looking for access to amenities and opportunities. That old approach succeeded in routinely pitting local populations against each other within the same state or region. Slowly, political disagreements emerged between rural and urban population centers. This phenomenon explains why towns in the Atlanta metropolitan area where I live (like Roswell and Tucker), are so fundamentally different socially and economically than the town of Brunswick, where Ahmaud Arbery was murdered, and even Waycross, Georgia, the nearby town where my dad was born. Slavishly following a conventional meta in an updated game is a surefire way to lose. In business, it can reinforce undesirable results in broader society, results that fester and radicalize future consumers.
But why should I care about little towns where people dream to leave? Because a conscientious executive—that is a decision-maker committed to doing what's right—calculates value in view of social cost as well as economic costs. This will be discussed later in more detail but doing what is right is as simple as considering all known variables and outcomes with special attention to human impact. The result is a more durable business to navigate tomorrow's sociological fire.
Most of America's Walterboros are in the Midwest or South. There are several reasons why everyone should care about these little forgotten towns. First, they are a vital part of America's history and heritage. Second, they represent an important part of the country's economic diversity. Third, they offer a unique and valuable perspective on the American experience. And fourth, they engender a strong sense of community that is sometimes lacking in metropolises, and in the aggregate, have outsized influence on the narrative shaping the view of corporations. This translates into political power in a republican form of government. These overlooked places shape public policy with their electoral influence and thus their inclusion in corporate investment is good business.
Consider the development of blockchain and the resulting problem-solving industry driving its expansion, also known as “mining.” While the internet endlessly debates whether cryptocurrency is an economic evolution or a passing fad that may be the twenty-first-century version of the Dutch tulip bulb market, crypto mining has become something far more serious of a topic in recent years to central banks. Our free-market system, and the lack of regulation, has given rise to companies purely focused on the creation of cryptocurrency.
Today, crypto mining requires large amounts of computer processing power as users take part in what amounts to a virtual race to solve a math problem first. The winner of said race gets to add the transactions taking place to the blockchain and is rewarded with cryptocurrency of their own. If this was a game being played by 50 people around the world, nobody would care much, which was the case in Bitcoin's nascent days of the late 2000s and early 2010s. But the race to win the right to alter the blockchain and get that episodically valuable cryptocurrency has become a global phenomenon. There are more than 100,000 computer groups all over the planet trying to win the race and solve the problem first. That means every time it starts, there are going to be about 100,000 losers who have revved up those processors for absolutely zero net gain. Still, the bigger problem is the staggering amount of electricity being used to power the great race.
Immense fossil fuel energy is often required to mine cryptocurrencies and makes their minting impractical when accounting for the environmental impact. According to the Center for Global Development, the mining of a single Bitcoin consumes as much energy as 18 American adults do in an entire year.1 Not exactly a realistic place to invest your money when you already fall well short of the poverty line. Thus, the very nature of that potentially lucrative venture not only creates environmental challenges, but also keeps digital currency in the hands of the already well-to-do. What's more, investors can now take stakes in crypto mining ventures. These ventures added corporate leadership teams to the race, and they want to be the biggest and the fastest to win the prize. In this environment, being conscientious about environmental impact could wind up feeling like entering LeMans in a push-pedal eco-car while everyone else has 440 hp engines in their Ferraris.
When you're trying to stretch your weekly paycheck and whatever benefits a modest wage might afford, the last thing on your mind is getting on the internet to charge up a $500 electric bill chasing something you can't see, smell, or hold in the palm of your hand. For sure, some in the crypto community are trying to develop solutions that use less energy, but accessing digital currency remains elusive for people in forgotten places.
Whether or not the crypto boom continues, its early implementations were a resource drain and skewed heavily in favor of an unrepresentative population sample of early adopters. This led to initial skepticism by those left behind by the trend and is an example of a “negative externality.” Negative externalities are the mostly unintended, yet harmful impacts caused by commercial actions. They often fuel political disagreements because there are always two groups: one party interested in the activity and positively engaged as a beneficiary, and another negatively impacted and wholly disengaged or adjacent to the foregoing.
In a perfect world, no corporate leader wants to deal with politics. But in the real world, neither the conservative market philosophy of nonregulation nor the liberal vision of strong government control wholly answers the question of how to create sustained growth and prosperity without horrendous externalities in general, and specifically within America's forgotten towns.
Today's executives are hyper-focused on profit rather than on value. I recall an old boss who was fond of saying, “I'm focused on issues that involve a B” (referring to “billions” in value to shareowners). But the old “META” that so many corporate decision-makers still cling to—and its negative externalities—impede that focus on value. In other words, social and political problems are distracting from our core mission to build values-oriented businesses. Both businesses and communities must level up together and mediate solutions between them or the gap will continue to widen, and things will become even more polarized than we already feel they are. In a worst-case scenario, the free enterprise system that enables the wealth of so many could be fundamentally replaced by younger generations who experience only the bad aspects of a market economy seemingly rigged against them.
Enter the conscientious executive.
Today's market corrections are driven as much by consumers expecting corporations to be outlets for change as by the market conditions themselves. We now operate in an emotive market—one still controlled by supply, demand, and price, but also by esoteric notions, like the environment, social justice, and other personal passions and evolving norms.
In 2016, Deloitte conducted a survey entitled “Capitalizing on the Shifting Consumer Food Value Equation,” and found that half the consumers in the survey claimed they chose foods and beverages based on health and wellness, safety, social impact, and experience more than price, taste, and convenience. Deloitte concluded that “consumer-led disruptions represent an opportunity, even an imperative, for manufacturers and retailers to reset and reposition themselves with consumers and shoppers.”2
One would think corporate decision-makers would take advantage of those new opportunities. But instead, the 25 biggest U.S. food and beverage manufacturers dismissed them as fads—and experienced disrupted sales. What a huge miss! Misalignment with a market of that magnitude makes it harder to grow and serve places like Walterboro, where the median income for a family sat at $32,549 in the 2020 Census and 30.1% of the population is below the poverty line.
As a capitalist, I am forced to acknowledge that this extreme stridency—that is, our refusal to endure short-term pain for long-term change—is causing the very foundation of our free-market structure to collapse on itself. The truth is that corporate leaders often resist investment and transformation even when change would serve long-term interests because of fears driven by quarterly earnings and Wall Street analysts.
The market does not self-regulate as well as it could because firms are increasingly unresponsive to the desires of consumers. Our communities, our societies—our environment—cannot survive the unsustainable and often detrimental nature of the old meta.
We must recognize that ramifications no longer take years but mere minutes—a 280-character post is enough. Time and effort are no longer excuses that we can hide behind like a shield. Consumers have the power at their fingertips to spread messages in a matter of seconds. We have seen social media induce change across the world, toppling dictatorships, and exposing corruption internationally. We've gone beyond the tipping point of only worrying about “getting ours” at the expense of the rest of society. We must align with our consumers, and in doing so, we must revitalize our forgotten towns.
We.
Must.
Level up.
Notes
1
. Moss, T. and Pisa, M. (2021). Bitcoin mining is bad for the world: The limited options for addressing the problem. Center for Global Development (12 April).
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/bitcoin-mining-bad-world-limited-options-addressing-problem
.
2
. Ringquist, J., Phillips, T., Renner, B., et al. (2016). Capitalizing on the shifting consumer food value equation. Deloitte.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/consumer-business/articles/us-food-industry-consumer-trends-report.html
.
2Forgotten People
My phone rang out with an unfamiliar alacrity. I knew something was amiss. I reached for the nightstand next to my bed on the thirty-second floor of the old Mandarin Oriental in Atlanta. The normally unremarkable ring tone sounded ominous. “Hello,” I answered. “Bring your people back to the office,” the voice on the other end demanded. It was my boss. A towering figure with an unmistakable radio-like voice, he was a good-natured man with whom I occasionally disagreed.
“I heard about your decision to let your team work from home, and I want you to reverse yourself,” he said. I looked at my wife who could hear the deep and bellicose voice on the other end of the line. I began to argue with one of the best bosses I've ever worked for.
“Bring your people back to the office or you will no longer be on my staff,” he instructed and then ended the call.
I've never been the guy to mindlessly follow orders, but my daughter Claudia had just been born and I needed a job. So, I began to ideate. What I needed was time; time for leaders in my centenarian organization to see what I saw, which was a fundamental shift in how the world would work in the face of the growing pandemic. I walked to a corner of the hotel room and sat down. The television was on a cable news channel, and it was coverage of a political rally. Scrolling along the chyron at the bottom of the screen read the words “… be conscientious.” I hadn't a clue about the story it referenced. But the words jumped off the television screen and parked in my brain for hours.
My mind wandered to Lee, a young employee whose elderly mother recently moved in, and instantly made Lee a pandemic caregiver. Lee's mom was especially at-risk and needed to avoid exposure at all costs. Then I thought
