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• Monday, January 28, 2008 09:13 PM

  @grubert

  You write:

  Bill Gates is probably not who you, or me, or anyone else thinks he is.

  In speaking about who Mr. Gates is, you seem to suggest he has only one persona, only one role he plays. Apart from the whole question of what we mean when we talk about "who someone really is" (and I would argue we can't really answer that question when pressed), I'm talking specifically about Mr. Gates as a public person. I neither know nor care (nor is it any of my business) whom Mr. Gates is as a private person. It's only the role he plays in public that interests me here.

  My point in citing Lewis is that public declarations have a certain weight in determining future behavior. Anyone who has made bold declarations in public, even if the public is merely our own circle of friends, knows how difficult it can be to back down from one's proclamations. Pretending to be responsible citizen is the first step in becoming a responsible citizen. That's how children learn how to do it, after all, right?

  And second, the first point goes double--even treble--for public figures. Their statements are parsed more closely, and their behavior observed more critically than average janes and joes. The pressure to make words and actions meet is more intense. And then, of course, the words and actions of public figures can actually change the discourse. They can shift the window of possible words and actions in the future. They can start trends, set the fashion, and "make it Ok" to follow suit.

  I see your point about the impotency of saints in corporations, although I think your diagnosis of the problem goes astray. In the first place, publicly traded corporations and privately held corporations have very different track records. Nearly identical legal structures. But publicly traded corps behave much worse as a rule.

  Secondly, prior to the recent invention of "shareholder value" as a concept (I believe the phrase was coined by Alfred Rappaport in the Harvard Business Review in 1981; I'd appreciate a correction if anyone knows of an earlier usage of the term), even publicly traded corporations could be counted on to behave rather differently than they do now. Again, nearly identical legal structures, but quite different behaviors.

  Maybe it's not the structure that's the problem, but rather the obsession--our obsession--with shareholder value. And as the holding of shares becomes ever more prevalent, the problem looks more and more like a social attitude. Saints notwithstanding, doesn't there seem to be a general understanding that a private company's first and most important responsibility is to make a profit? And then, what does it mean that the foregoing question seems hopelessly innocuous? Why don't we reflexively believe that business have to navigate a weave of complex, interrelated responsibilities, just like the human beings who comprise them?

  —powersjq Read powersjq's other letters
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