Is What's Good for Corporate America Still Good For America?

[Renew Deal]

"Of course," you answer, since you're reading this blog on HBR. And "of course," I answer, since I ran the editorial page at BusinessWeek for a decade and covered everything from currencies to innovation. But the anti-Big Business chorus is getting louder and louder, with the Tea Party radicals on the right singing a tune CEOs and B-School profs would be foolish to ignore. They should be worried. I sure am.

The CEOs I have talked to in recent years over drinks, overseas, and in private, are worried too. I have heard this comment at Davos far too many times to ignore: "I am as patriotic as anyone, but when I see where my corporation is investing, where it is doing R&D and especially where it is hiring, I worry about my country. It's all going outside America. But what can I do?"

In vino veritas perhaps. Not ALL of his global company's R&D, investing and hiring is happening in China or India, but so much is that he and his fellow US CEO-buddies talk about it a lot — to themselves. When they do go public, they frame the Big Business issue in terms of complaints — too much regulation, high taxes, government debt to invest in America. The Tea Party old folks, the union people, the millions of white and blue collar Americans laid off — and my Gen Y students — frame the Big Business issue differently — in terms of obligation. They wonder, what, if any, obligations do corporations still feel to the nation, to democracy, to employees, especially after taxpayers bailed out Wall Street, Detroit, and the "system" in general. They wonder about CEOs making so much when employees lose jobs to outsourcing and hedge fund managers pay half the federal tax rate than their secretaries.

One of my first cover stories for BusinessWeek was on the New Corporate Elite, back in the early 80s. I can still see those fresh faces, the young entrepreneurs and high tech engineers who were leading their companies to compete against Japan, OPEC and other global forces. They were heroes.

Now most are not. Why? Let me try and explain why America's Corporate Elite is increasingly seen as betraying the American Dream, not building it. Ponder this list:
<snip>

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/10/is_whats_good_for_corporate_am.html

This is an interesting and well written analysis of what's wrong with corporate America.

[Tippy]

1. K&R.....Your dam tootin we want answeres...TODAY

"Americans still love business and business heroes. They love entrepreneurs especially. What they are coming to deeply distrust is Big Business. They want to know if Corporate America still has a social contract with the nation and what that contract is composed of. They want to know what obligations Corporate America has to the citizens and nation of America. They fear the worst."

[Renew Deal]

2. I wish I could post the entire thing.

It's all good.