A Change of Ideas

There were confident Japanese and uneasy Latin Americans, serene Indians and eager Nigerians. America's top businessmen traded ideas with their European counterparts, and even a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church showed up to have his say. All of them were delegates to the 13th International Management Conference, which last week drew 4,200 business thinkers to Manhattan from 84 lands. Wearing headsets for simultaneous translations (into English, French and Spanish), they talked about the new opportunities and problems that face the managers of the world's businesses. While they discussed such matters as tariffs, credit and interest rates, their main thrust probed much deeper--into the whole meaning and purpose of the modern corporation. Specifically, they wanted to know how businessmen should square their everyday drive for profit with the broader goal of enhancing human welfare.

Efficiency with Service. The whole idea sounded Utopian, and in another time would not even have been discussed. But the rapid growth of world business and the increasing sensitivity of businessmen to their place in society have created strong new currents. The remarkable consensus of last week's congress was that the old attitude of "business is business" has withered. With social awareness growing, today's businessmen must cope with new moral and human dimensions. "Why can't you think less about profit and more about people?" challenged Sverre Walter Rostoft, president of the Federation of Norwegian Industries. One way to accept that challenge was proposed by David Rockefeller, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, who urged the world's managers to form their own private task force to help the developing nations learn the lessons of good management they need to move ahead.

But the needs of men more than those of nations seemed to be the chief concern of the managers. Lebanon's Philosopher Charles Habib Malik, former President of the United Nations General Assembly, chided Western businessmen for offering the developing peoples only material ends. Said Malik: "Roads, dams, efficiency and the smile of rulers--that is all that matters; but spirit, freedom, joy, happiness, truth, man--that never enters the mind. A world of perfect technicians is the aim, not a world of human beings, let alone of beings divine." Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, Archbishop of Genoa and an ecclesiastical manager who has often written on the deeper problems of management, added that "men who work today do not only ask for efficiency but for an efficiency that renders some service. Man feels the need to create." The cardinal urged the managers to show each worker where and how he serves and creates through his contribution to the overall production process.

More of Their Own. Sir Harry Pilkington, chairman of Britain's glassmaking Pilkington Brothers, urged the managers to increase their own numbers by sharing more of their responsibilities. Said he: "It is often not the failure to pay high wages but the failure to recognize that more people--and different people--are willing and able to accept responsibility that accounts for internal strains. The sum total of talent in any country is growing fast and it must be used, even though the risks of allowing more people to carry responsibility, to take decisions, are increasing."

To judge by the number of young faces and the liberal sprinkling of women present at the congress, the world's businessmen have already begun to realize that the need for more managers is growing faster than the supply. Young or old, the managers solved no great problems at the conference, but they publicly opened many windows that have long been closed. The delegates came away with the realization that, if their own methods are changing in a rapidly industrializing world, their ideas are changing even faster.

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