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Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, and Vonnegut’s Player Piano all envision a world where the system—big bureaucracy, big government, corporations, changing technology, or a mix of these—achieves total, albeit benign, control. The individual is lost and dominated by something larger than him/herself. 

Adults today face an increasingly organized society. Organizations domi nate public life and, increasingly, private life. What dilemmas face us in the world of contemporary business? For Mormons, the difficulties in coping with corporate life are compounded by ethical tensions. Even the Church itself faces problems of corporatism in the private sector. 

Business as Model

Our world is becoming one big system. It’s not enough now just to have a job. In a very real sense, you become your job. Brave New Workplace by Robert Howard (1985) is just one of several new thought-provoking books which suggest that the corporation has been elevated to a place of central eminence in our society as never before. 

Business is becoming the basic source of personal and social identity. Poli tics, religion, the family, and a variety of other institutions that dominated the past are all being subsumed under today’s corporate umbrella. The workplace is becoming the center of support, of caring, of community. In short, we are in danger of becoming dependent, fully institutionalized. 

These progressive firms are recruiting employees from campuses all around us. Those who fly out for interviews with interested corporations find lavish furnishings, saunas, running tracks, and first-class hotels for an overnight stay. Weight rooms offer you some iron to pump, and medical facilities monitor your blood pressure. I recently talked to an executive who described his recent semiannual visit to the corporate health care facility. His business pays thousands of dollars to send all its managers there. It has now become the domain of big business to test how healthy you are, what you need to do, what you should eat, and how much you need to exercise. 

Take, for instance, the executive dining room at Tenneco Corporation in Texas. Signs on the wall don’t just list the prices, but also the calories for each item! This way you’ll know how to take good care of yourself, how to build a good corporate body and provide a strong set of arms and legs for the company. Many firms sponsor athletic events and social functions—country clubs for top management, baseball and bowling teams for hourly employees. A Chrysler plant I visited recently in Detroit even had a company choir. They provide robes for all the singers who go around Detroit singing at local churches. The Chrysler choir! Kind of exciting! All encompassing. Can’t you envision Lee Iacocca, baton in hand, leading the singing? 

Contemporary big companies are housed in modern-day cathedrals and even include priestly functions. Some personnel departments administer ethical EKGs which print out spiritual judgments and project future behavior. They test your honesty and your morality. Job interviews in some firms take on the character of LDS temple recommend interviews, complete with questions of worthiness and inquiry about affiliation with apostate groups—e.g., the Sierra Club. 

Trusting the Institution

These large corporations have become central to our society. Harvard’s Robert Reich and others suggest that we’re going to see much more of this phenomenon (Reich 1983). The corporation is becoming the mini-society of the future, taking over such public concerns as unemployment, medical care, education, and training. Costs of corporate learning programs are starting to equal the budgets of universities and colleges in this country, amounting to a $30 billion industry (Carnevale 1986). Companies are providing day-care facilities, on the job seminars, and retirement travel programs. From womb to tomb. 

Advocates say we are witnessing the creation of a corporate Utopia, the beginnings of an ideal future. I’m not so sure. I don’t trust all this blissful togetherness. I don’t resonate to the euphoria that I read about in Tom Peters and Bob Waterman’s In Search of Excellence (1982). Their descriptions of some of these companies smack of paternalism. Japanese management and Theory Z mask the creation of underlying dependency, an infrastructure of fear. Recent articles are starting to talk about the F Factor, fear, as the chief characteristic of Japanese firms. This type of company culture spawns a quiet, obedient, acquiescent employee. These new humanistic systems are characterized by unequal power, gentle exploitation, and social domination. The beauty of modern totalitarianism is that it is so nice, so comfortable, such a good “fit.”

I don’t see these things happening on a universal scale yet, but I see an accelerating trend and direction, bits and pieces coming together. It seems to me that all around us, if we look, we can see this darker side of today’s brave new bureaucracy. 

The media is aware. Several years ago an interesting film called Network focused on an anchor person (Mr. Beal) on the nightly news who one day puts down his script and refuses to report the fodder being fed him on the cue cards. Rather, he begins to talk about reality in America—injustice, poverty, and other societal problems. As Beal cuts loose, executives behind the scenes scramble, wondering whether to cut for a commercial or to let Beal go. But they quickly become intrigued with Beal’s blast. Something he says strikes a chord within; they let him talk on while management sits riveted to their chairs. 

Then Beal exhorts his viewers, if they agree with him, to throw open their windows and yell as loudly as possible, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” From the streets of Manhattan, through city after city, to the fields of Iowa, people all across America throw open their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” 

Well, the ratings go up and the whole country tunes in to this wild man on the screen who’s talking about democracy and people’s rights and justice for the little guy. The TV audience grows for the next few weeks, and top executives are pleased with this fresh, new approach to the news. Then one night, Beal announces he is going to report on an underhanded business transaction be tween the Arabs and his own TV station. The top brass cut to a commercial and pull him off the tube. He soon finds himself in the corporate boardroom facing the chairman of the board. Beal walks into the boardroom with carpet up to his knees, a lavish mahogany table, and an ornate chandelier. From the other end of the table, the chairman of the board starts tearing away at the little newsman: 

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beal, and I won’t have it, is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions out of this country and now they must pay it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is sociological balance. 

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations, there are no peoples, there are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems—one vast and immense, interwoven, interacting multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Electro dollars, multidollars, reichsmarks, rands, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, subatomic, and galactic structure of things today. 

And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And you will atone. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beal? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America, there is no democracy; there is only IBM, ITT, and AT&T, and Du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. These are the nations of the world today. 

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? No, they get out their programming charts, statistical decision theories, mini-max solutions and compute the price/cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. The world is a collage of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is business . . . It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beal, to see that perfect world in which there is no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast ecumenical holding company for which all men will work to serve a common profit, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beal, to preach this evangel. 

Beal responds, “Why me?” 

“Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.” 

“I’ve just seen the face of God.” 

“You just might be right, Mr. Beal” (Network cl983). 

That’s the media and Hollywood. It may be an overstatement; maybe it’s artistic license. However, someone has said, “Artists are the antennae of the race.” They’re ahead, they’re picking up the signals, they’re looking where society is going and reflecting it. This idea is being pursued in the press, on television, in film, in plays, in novels. 

Perhaps the biggest threat facing us today is not terrorism, not communism, but another dangerous “ism.” Organizationalism. The contemporary prevailing ideology declares, “You’ve got to belong. Trust us and we’ll take care of you. Join us, become an IBM’er. We’ll not only give you a pay check, we’ll give you a beer bust as well.” “A baseball cap that says ‘Hewlett Packard’ on the front.” “Be a good corporate citizen, be a team player.” 

This insidious philosophy preempts the individual. Everybody’s talking about corporate culture these days—about how good it is, how important it is for organizations to have cultures. I argue that corporations already are cultures. They do have values, they do have rituals, meaning, goals, and traditions. When they recruit and entice you to work for them, they want to imprint the corporate culture on you. Tattoo you. In fact, they want to baptize you in it. Immerse you, convert you, and bring you salvation—a Utopia, a problem free future. 

In return, they require dependence and conformity. Today’s business culture not only says, “Here’s a job, and here’s how to spend your eight hours a day,” it also says, “Here’s our uniform. Dress like this for success in our organization.” “Here’s the way we talk in our company. Learn these words.” Sometimes I can sit on a plane and, from what the passengers behind me are saying, tell who they work for. I can also look at travelers seated around me and can tell their company by the way they dress. For instance, this person’s from EDS—dark suit, white shirt, subliminal striped tie, black shoes. 

Corporations even dictate what you may partake of while you’re on the company premises. Several months ago an employee working at a Coca-Cola factory had his wife bring him a Burger King lunch. As he was sipping his soda, a supervisor came up and told him he couldn’t drink Pepsi on Coke property. When the worker asked how his boss knew what he was drinking, he was informed that Burger King doesn’t sell Coke. Company management made a big deal of it and laid the guy off for three days without pay because he took a sip of Pepsi on Coca-Cola property {Fortune, 22 July 1985, p. 119).

That’s organizationalism. It’s all encompassing. In some ways, I see in these new enormous conglomerates an echo of the past, of other feudalistic institutions of history. In past centuries, it was the dominant church or the fiefdom of the prince that held sway over the lives of thousands of serfs requiring their labor with primitive tools. Today’s new feudalism, the corporation, controls the lives of millions of techno-peasants who wander throughout the contemporary kingdom, each carrying a personal computer under his arm. 

Lifestyles at the Corporate Top

Historically, the prince and archbishop enjoyed lavish lifestyles because their royal blood or ecclesiastical ordination placed them in powerful positions where they could control the resources of many people. Today’s top executives receive compensation based on a similar rationale and amass huge personal fortunes derived from the toil of workers. In some cases it’s because the chief executive officer inherited the business. Such executives claim a salary, bonus, and stock options as part of the divine rights of kings and managers. Many live exceedingly comfortable, if not exorbitant, lifestyles. It’s not unusual to find companies where the ratio of top executive compensation to other employees is 100 to 1. According to the consulting firm of Booz, Allen and Hamilton, Inc., today’s chief executives average approximately $750,000 in annual income, roughly fifty times that of an average factory worker (Johnson 1985). Last year many executives picked up over a million dollars each—including some who averaged $6,000 a day {Business Week, 5 May 1986, pp. 48-80). 

While this excess occurs, 30 million Americans are ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed. Over 10 million people are unemployed. In 1983, the poorest 20 percent of U.S. families received only 4.8 percent of that year’s total income. The richest 20 percent received nearly eight times that amount, up from 33 percent 10 years ago to 38 percent. Almost 40 percent of a year’s total earnings goes to the wealthiest households. A national survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Board concluded that the wealthiest 2 percent of U.S. families control nearly one-third of all financial assets. With incomes of $100,000 or more, they own 71 percent of municipal bonds, 50 percent of all privately held stock, and 39 percent of corporate bonds (“Where’s” 1985). 

The gap is widening between the Haves and the Have Nots. This increasingly grotesque contradiction reeks of inequality, sowing the seeds of conflict and trouble. Such discrepancies violate key notions that we have had since the founding of this country—opportunity, equality, and justice. Those at the top are increasingly unable to relate to those at the bottom. They have become desensitized, out of touch, unaware of the feelings, struggles, and realities of those on the economic outskirts. Increasing numbers of people are being pushed to the margins of our society. The implications are frightening. 

Beware of what earning big bucks does to the heart. It may create harden ing of the emotional arteries. It’s not enough to pay tithing and donate to the March of Dimes. Handling wealth is a perplexing dilemma for any thoughtful Latter-day Saint.

Shortly after coming to BYU a decade ago, I began doing some consulting with a firm in California which was owned by a larger conglomerate. I was helping the smaller company deal with some organizational difficulties it had with productivity and quality. Eventually the board chairman of the parent company decided to fire the president of the smaller firm. Since I’d been consulting with them for a while and advising the chairman about problems and strategies, he proposed that I take over as president of the company. 

The offer was not without a certain appeal. The company faced a number of interesting organizational challenges. When we talked about compensation, I was amazed that the salary and bonus for my first year would be almost ten times what I was earning at BYU. I was shocked that people were making that kind of money in little firms like this one. I asked for a couple of weeks to think about it and then mulled it over, meditated, and bounced the idea off some colleagues and friends. Finally, the night before I had to make a decision I told a friend, “I’m just not going to do it, because I’m afraid that if I become a part of that world, I’ll become corrupted.” My friend’s response was telling: “Why don’t you just go off and corrupt yourself for three years? Get all those old college debts paid off. Get a chunk of money in the bank. Then you can come back, teach at BYU, and invest in the stock market. Big dividends will carry you. You’ll be in fat city.” 

His logic was tempting, but I simply felt that I would never return from that yuppie lifestyle to teaching. I wrestled with whether I could handle wealth—a serious challenge of today’s brave new workplace -— and I decided in all honesty that I could not. 

The Dark Side of Power

Power, or position in the system beyond financial compensation, can be very alluring. A top executive described his work experience in several different companies this way: “We always saw signs of physical affliction because of stress and strain. Ulcers, violent headaches. In one of the large corporations, the chief executive officer ate Gelusil by the minute. That’s for ulcers. [He] had a private dining room with his private chef. All he ever ate was well-done steak” (Terkel 1975, 534). He went on, “You’re always on guard. Did you ever see a jungle animal that wasn’t on guard? You’re always looking over your shoulder. You don’t know who’s following you” (p. 535). Later, he said: 

A man wants to get to the top of the corporation not for the money involved. After a certain point, how much more money can you make? In my climb, I’ll be honest, money was secondary. Unless you have tremendous demands, yachts, private air planes—you get to a certain point, money isn’t that important. It’s the power, the status, the prestige. Frankly, it’s delightful to be on top and have everyone call you Mr. Ross and have a plane at your disposal and a car and a driver at your disposal. When you come into town, there’s people to take care of you. When you walk into a board meeting, everybody gets up and says hello. I don’t think there’s any human being who doesn’t love that. It’s a nice feeling” (pp. 538-39). 

In the public sector, the same dilemma prevails. A student gave me an article several years ago, and while I’ve lost the source since then, the description of power politics vividly captures the problem. The following dialogue is between an interviewer and a presidential campaign manager: 

Running for president feels exactly like being president. The ordinary experiences of life melt away, are replaced by a constant swirl of limousines and money, jet planes and prepared statements, secret service men and gorgeous political groupies. There is almost an infinite sense of power and prestige. It feels wonderful, which is why it’s so terrible. 

When asked if he felt he was being corrupted and caught up in the power game of the campaign, he responded, 

Yes, I particularly remember the feeling of riding alone in a limousine with a motor cycle escort. Everyone was peering in at me. To them I was a blur: power in motion. To me they were a frozen milieu of still, dumb, gawking faces—as if captured by a strobe light. During those moments I knew the glory the President himself knows and it was an impressive experience. Had it continued I have no doubt that I would have succumbed to it absolutely. 

The interviewer asked, “Succumbed to what?” 

To the atrocious assumption that I was more important than other people. And I would not have been evil to have done so—just human. If your repeated experience is that you’re in motion and everyone else is frozen on the side of the road, it is only reasonable to conclude that you are a more important person than they, that they expect you to run the universe for them. You don’t feel as though you are being corrupted by power. You feel as though you are intelligently responding to empirical evidence. And that is power’s greatest corruption: the tragic and universal misconception by the wielder of power that it isn’t corrupting him. 

Power is heady stuff. It makes us potentially vulnerable to arrogance, to self-deception, to dehumanizing the exploitative stance toward other people. We must critically analyze and not simply canonize our corporations. Too often university business programs are designed, courses are taught, degrees are created, and an office of corporate relations is established to mold students into the organization’s framework—to make them good, loyal servants of power. 

As a professor of business administration at BYU, I see a special need for confrontation with alternative ideas. We’re too comfortable. Jacob Bronowski argues in his book, The Ascent of Man (1973), that the purpose of the university is not “to worship what is known but to question it” (p. 360). At BYU, it seems to me we haven’t created enough of that kind of questioning, inquiring approach to learning. 

Faculty from other universities have reflected a similar concern. Several years ago, a Stanford professor suggested that while he observed BYU students to be pleasant individuals, their educations were hampered by a lack of classroom conflict and critical thinking. He also perceived faculty as too soft, un abrasive to a fault. These factors combine to form a debilitating drawback to genuine learning. We need what Bronowski describes as a certain kind of bare footed, ragamuffin, irreverent spirit of debate. Too many Mormons seem to believe that the glory of God is conformity, not intelligence.

A colleague commented to me, “Some in my department perceive you as antibusiness. You seem to think all businesses are big, bad, evil and corrupt.” I want to make it clear that I am not quite so extreme. I am saying beware. I am saying be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. 

To be accused of being antibusiness is, from one perspective, a compliment. To clarify, I would have to admit that while I’m not antibusiness, I am anti certain business practices. I’m anti massive concentrations of power. I’m anti businesses which erode the frail ecological balance and pollute the environment. I’m anti businesses that create unsafe products and market them to an unsuspecting public. And when the FDA imposes restrictions, these companies knowingly dump the products on Third World countries. I’m anti businesses which pay women sixty cents for every dollar they pay men and discriminate against blacks and other minorities in the name of free enterprise. I’m anti companies that have no sense of social responsibility to the surrounding community, firms which promise jobs and investment but which instead milk the area and then run away. I’m against businesses which believe that not to maximize profit is the greatest sin. 

In recent years Utah has gained a national reputation as the fraud capital of the country. Too much of our culture implies that any business deal is okay as long as you can get away with it. A group of business faculty and graduate students at BYU studying collusion between certain companies, banks, and prominent individuals in Utah, found troubling evidence of corporate mal feasance. It’s curious to me how often you hear in Utah that a pyramid scheme is God’s plan for financial success. Too many scams have occurred here in the name of brotherhood. “Trust me,” scammers say. The Church speaks out against sex, drugs, and alcohol, and well it should. I only wish there was equal concern for financially ripping off your brothers and sisters. Ironically, Nephi prophesied about those in the latter days who justify “in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor” (2 Ne. 28:8). 

I’m also against organizations that dehumanize the human spirit. I recall a worker in Detroit who retired from General Motors last November after forty years. He said, “You know, GM gave me all the security I could ever want. They paid good wages. The union and the company took care of me in terms of health and safety issues. The union fought for me when supervisors came down too hard. I had the rights of due process. GM built great cars and filled the highways of this country. But there’s one thing I’ll never forgive them for. They never let me grow as a human being.” 

We must find ways to ensure conscious, explicit, personal agency in this contemporary organizational society. We must develop mechanisms for self-determination and create institutional processes which free us and open our options rather than program us. I worry as I look at academic programs and hear recruiters talk. The academic or career tracks they discuss suggest that we’re mere automatons—once we’re put on the correct trajectory, everything will be okay.

Our work structures must liberate rather than domesticate. Our organizational behavior theory and management science must not simply reflect a corporatist theory, emphasizing what the Nazis called the organization uberalles, the system above all. Instead we need to facilitate individual choice, self-determination, and autonomy. As Thoreau argued, “We should be men [and women] first, and subjects afterwards” (1963 edition, 223). We need a new grassroots agenda, an organizational declaration of independence. 

Bureaucracy and the Church

Business and government are not the only institutions which attempt to dominate. As Latter-day Saints we belong a multinational organization with many corporate features and procedures in its structures. The Pearl of Great Price —• the gospel and the atonement of Jesus Christ—have not changed; but they are borne to us now in a different setting and in a different fashion than ever before in the history of the Church. Any organization that requires the loyalty of its members also has the potential of abusing that loyalty. As a loyal member of the Church who has served in ward and stake positions all my life, I find myself uneasy when I see elements I deplore in corporations with seeming parallels in the Church I espouse. The all-pervasive nature of the Church suggests critical issues for the individual. We’re all familiar with the trek of the Martin Handcart Company and the Mountain Meadows massacre, events in which innocent people suffered because of the organizational imperative which required blind obedience to authority. 

As Saints in the twentieth century, we continue to face similar institutional pressures—to conform, to march in lock step, to do as we are told. Rather than hearing a simple humility which implies the need for growth and further understanding, we are given a message of seemingly smug assurance: the answers are all in, and the thinking has been done—for us. 

Bureaucracy in the Church arises in part from sheer size. Take, for instance, the high-rise Church Office Building in Salt Lake City, now jokingly referred to by many as the “great and spacious building.” A professional colleague told me of his experience accompanying a stake president from Latin America com ing for the first time to general conference. As they entered the posh corporate headquarters of the Church at 50 E. North Temple, the Latin American brother experienced severe psychological shock. The surroundings were such a far cry from the “poverty and simplicity of the saints in Mexico, many of whom still had dirt floors in their houses.” The contrast between the member ship and the bureaucracy was overwhelming, and he wondered if “it was the same church.” 

Another stake president from the East coast, an effective businessman, had an equally negative, though different reaction. He complained to me that there was too much red tape, too many staff positions swallowing up tithing money and providing nothing in return. He saw policies and bureaucratic in efficiencies that made even the federal government look like a small, streamlined, entrepreneurial organization. His recommendation: “Somone should go up the elevator, eliminating every other floor of the Church Office Building and then go back through and cut out another third of the remaining floors. Then the Church offices will be pared down to a reasonable and effective size.” 

Among some ecclesiastical leaders and academics who are involved in committee assignments at Church headquarters, the building is a giant warehouse of rumor and political jockeying. A good many professionals and managers there would not, by my estimation, be eligible for comparable positions in the “real world” of outside organizations. Hiring and firing practices seem to have few controls against abuse. “It’s not what you know, but who you know” or “inspiration, desperation, relation” are quips with a core of truth. 

Institutionalism in the Church has led to a strict adherence to worldly corporate norms—from the creation of positions like ward executive secretaries, to correlation programs, business-attire dress, and top ecclesiastical leaders going through management training programs carried out by expensive corporate consultants. 

Paid bureaucrats censor what becomes safe, palatable fodder for the Church membership. An acquaintance in the Church offices actually told me that the policy of one administrator of Church educational matters is actually, “If it’s in a general conference address, it’s true. If it hasn’t been said at conference, it’s not true.” Some writers worry more about propagandistic value than about historical accuracy and factual truth. 

The Church’s extension into business has troubled some LDS members of conscience. Throughout the West, pioneer buildings have been razed in favor of parking lots and/or new generic chapels. Elderly poor have been pushed out of historic Salt Lake structures to make way for expensive, high-rise condominiums. Big real-estate deals sucked the lifeblood out of numerous locally owned retail firms in downtown Salt Lake City, causing bankruptcy and leaving whole sections of the city controlled by out-of-state interests. The infatuation between prominent Mormons and Adnan Khashoggi is now turning sour only with the discovery of creditor claims, layoffs, and lawsuits, but no one complained about the promise of his megabucks stained with war and death. Blood money from a billion-dollar arms dealer of questionable ethics seems incongruous with the earlier dream of Utah as Zion, built by the pure in heart. 

Well did Isaiah envision our day: “Thy princes are rebellious, and the companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come into them” (Isa. 1:23). 

Strategies for Survival

How can we deal with the contradictions, the problems, the vicissitudes of power, the pressure of the system to acculturate us? Can we be Mormon and still work for a modern corporation? Can the Church escape the corporate pitfalls? I offer here several partial answers for surviving, for preserving one’s sense of self with integrity intact.

One strategy is to reflect. Take time to think about what is happening as we live and operate in a corporate system. Meditate; step outside and critique yourself; think before you act. Most people do just the opposite. Only after we’re drowning in problems do we finally step back and say, “What am I doing here, and how did I get into this?” One Utah company created over 200 checking accounts around the state so they could kite checks through and keep everybody at a financial arm’s length. After it was all over and the chief executive was behind bars, he reflected that events escalated so rapidly that he just hadn’t realized what was going on. 

Albert Speer in Inside the Third Reich (1981) talks about the same process. He started out as an architect who happened to get a good job for the Fiihrer designing a millennial city to last for 1,000 years. To Speer, this was a fantastic career opportunity. Reflecting after many decades in prison, Speer acknowledged that he alone was responsible for his own evasiveness. He alone ignored what was going on. He was too busy, working too hard to realize that he had been caught up in the Nazi death machine. Personal meditation and reflection can save our sense of accountability. 

A second way to survive is to be in the organization, but not of the organization. Stay in touch with your own personal core beliefs, or the organizational imperative will take control and dominate. Organizational loyalty may be a vice rather than a virtue. 

Third, maintain human sensitivity in the midst of a business career. It’s not simply a question of how much you earn. It’s also a question of where you spend your time and what you personally do and feel. As I recall from reading years ago, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued that until you have marched to the barricades with the workers of the world, life has no meaning. We need to be out in the field mingling with people, not just in the corporate suite. Too many executives I know live in posh condos in wealthy neighbor hoods. A driver picks them up in the morning, and they go to work with their windows up, reading the Wall Street Journal or watching the news on the automobile television. They arrive at the office, have a couple of meetings with other top honchos in the system, go off to sessions with the governor, president, or senator, then head back to their lavish retreat. Somehow, in the midst of affluence, we must be a part of the real world. 

Fourth, to avoid the arrogance of success, be humble with whatever good fortune comes your way. Remember the two typologies described in the Book of Mormon? Korihor bragged that success occurred because of his own genius. All good things come “according to the management of the creature,” by fighting and clawing to the top (Alma 30:17). The other scriptural prototype was articulated by King Benjamin, who decried boasting of our achievements and warned against lifting ourselves above the poor and oppressed. “Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance . . . for his punishments are just.” Benjamin denounces this assumption: “Whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent. . . . Are we not all beggars?” (Mosiah 4:17—19) Whatever we have is a gift. It is not ours because of our own genius, our aggressiveness in climbing the ladder, our business school degrees, or our sophisticated computer skills. Our talents and abilities are stewardships for which we will be held responsible, not licenses of right of-way over others. 

Fifth, at some point we have to be willing to take a stand. We might as well take it early, rather than offering too little, too late. It’s the little things that trap us. When facing compromise, we know what is right. I’m making a simple plea to act on that knowledge. I was recently researching the case of Rita Lavelle, the first of several people in the Reagan administration to be indicted and serve time in prison. She described how with her new MBA tucked under her arm, she thought she could handle anything. She started going to business luncheons, working out deals, agreeing to certain practices be tween companies and the EPA. I think her problem was pretty simple. She just never took a stand on the little things, got morally seduced, and was trapped. Like many young people, she felt she would do whatever she had to now; and later, when she had successfully climbed to the top of the hierarchy, she could change the system. 

We desperately seek success, most often misunderstanding what it really is. In the media recently Mother Teresa was asked how she could continue to dedicate her life to the poor, a marvelous but laborious work for comparatively few when each year millions more poverty-stricken individuals inhabit the Third World. As I recall, she responded, in effect, that the important thing for us is not “success,” but to be true to our own missions. I hope each of us would think about what our mission is and try to be true to it. 

I’m not suggesting that we run away from these wretched organizations. I’m arguing that we can and should take them on. We built the corporate systems, and we can still change them. They need overhauling. We must take a stand, speak out, and resist. Our efforts will give others courage. Let’s rock the boat and question the system. Let’s advocate new principles, push in new directions, and challenge the status quo. If we do this, we can make a difference. Maybe we can even reform the bureaucratic world in which we live.