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Rev. Coté:
There's another
critically important reason
for having corporations work in cooperation with independent
non-profit Foundations.
Que:
And that is . . .
Rev. Coté:
With a corporation ( as most of them are presently
structured) there is no guiding entity. There is no
outside overseers. Where the corporate
founder or his heirs are still in the picture,
there is some oversight, but that
oversight is certainly not independent.
Stockholders are the closest thing to an
overseer , but the average
stockholder has nothing to do with running
the company. Their
relationship is limited to being a money
lender.
Que:
So if you ask a
stockholder what his/her interest is in
the company, he/she will say
"money?"
Rev. Coté:
Yes. With rare exceptions, dividends and
higher stock prices are their only focus.
Que:
Then the
corporate executives are free to do
anything they choose to do.
Rev. Coté:
Your question has both a "yes" and a
"no" answer. On the
"no" side, corporate leaders have to focus on
money and produce financial returns that shows up in the
next quarterly report. You could say that
they are slave to money. The "bottom
line" rules, It's produce a
profit or get fired.
Que:
And on the
"yes" side"
Rev. Coté: Corporate
executives run the companies for the stockholders. So other than
to conform to the money-interests and to avoid violating
the
letter of the law, there are no controls over what corporate leaders can
do.
Human nature is such that very few people are able
to handle positions of great power without getting lost in the power they wield.
As a result, all too frequently, corporate executives are engaged in
unethical and unscrupulous activities with the sole intent of increasing
company profits and/or ripping off as much money as they can before getting
fired. How many times have you
heard about employees, customers and/or
the environment being sacrificed for the
sake of higher profits?
Que:
Way too
many. Your answer reminds me of the famous quote form Lord Acton, "Power corrupts
and absolute power corrupts absolutely." ***
Rev. Coté: The evidence tells us that
this is also true in the corporate world.
Que:
Am I correct is
saying that in the Enron Scandal, Kenneth
Lay, Jeffery Skilling and several other
Enron executives had no one overseeing
their activities?
Rev. Coté: That's
correct. They only had each other, and in
the name of profits, they each went along with the
other's deception until it got way out of
hand.
Que:
What about the Arthur Anderson
Accounting firm? Weren't they the
overseers?
Rev. Coté: That
was the public impression being given at the time,
but they were being paid millions of
dollars. They had a huge conflict of
interest.
Que: So they were in on
the scam
Rev. Coté: Yes.
Que: So who
ended up paying the bills?
Rev. Coté: The
22,000 employees, the thousands of stockholders and the
tax payers.
Que:
And you are telling me that if
corporations were answerable of an overseeing foundation
that major scandals like the Enron fiasco would be
avoided.
Rev. Coté:
Yes! A well-run overseeing
foundation would catch the corruption before in reached
a crisis intensity.
Que:
"Well-run" sounds like a weasel
clause in your proposal. Won't the
foundations simply play along with whatever the
corporate leaders want?
Rev. Coté: No.
The Foundations will be set up with some clearly written
bylaws that will, among other things, require
independent (outside, third party) audits of the company's financial
records.
Que: So What is your
"bottom line?"
Rev.
Coté: Most, if not all, of the major corporate mismanagement fiascoes
that have cost society dearly would not occur if the corporate leaders had
to answer to a co-partner -- a co-partner in the form of a non-profit foundation.
Que:
So under the structure of The New Corporate World, the
corporate leaders will become the good guys instead of the villains whose only
interest is money.
Rev. Coté: There really aren't
any bad guys, ' but for the moment, we'll let your metaphor
stand. Think of it this way: Under the watchful eye
of their overseeing Foundation, corporate executives would never be
allowed to steal the money out of the employees pension funds.
Corporate executives could never get away with paying themselves
multi-millions of dollars while the company crashed. Scandals
like the multi-billion dollar Enron fiasco could never happen.
Que:
It sounds like you are setting the stage for some heroes to step out and
shine in the spotlight of The New Corporate World.
Rev. Coté: The corporate executives who choose to follow
our suggestions are going to be the leaders in The New Corporate World
that rises out of the already in process environmental disasters and out of
the major, social,
political, economic, religious and environmental
transformations that are also in process right now.
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A
major, peaceful redistribution of wealth,