Page 44 - BusinessWest February 7, 2022

Ethics
Continued from page 9
to lose it. If I ship a bad product to a big customer like Boeing, and there’s failure, I’m destroyed in my busi- ness and in my industry. It’s a top-down, flow-down thing to make sure everyone’s on the same page con- cerning the ethics that you believe in.”
Loper: “The recent decision by Smith & Wesson is a great example of how challenging it can be to make decisions in the business world, and by what yard- stick. You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror every day, and there are personal convictions that you have to relate to.
“One of the things I’ve found to be helpful — I’m not sure it’s a solution, but it certainly made it easier for me to look at things when I was in business — is to pull up from the situation that I found myself in as president and think about the different stake- holders and what they were expecting of the orga- nization that I started up or developed, and what responsibilities I had to those stakeholders. That was true whether it was to the city that helped me to get the power that I needed delivered to a place where they had never delivered that much power before, or whether it was the people supplying the material from India, or whether it was putting an
ad in the paper to attract people with certain skills to work on a certain piece of equipment — and then seeing people standing in line, waiting for an opportunity to work on that machine, knowing that it hurt other people because I was taking their best.
“I was constantly dealing with matters that bor- dered on ethical issues, and one of the things that helped me was this concept of conscious capitalism and the idea of thinking more broadly than my own business and trying to take a long view of what value creation is all about, and for whom. And there were constant tradeoffs, and I was always trying to look at bigger issues and make the best decision I could with the information that we had.”
DiGiorgio: “We have several keys at our business — security, empathy, honoring commitments, and then, fiscal responsibility. And they all flow together. And if we do those things, that’s going to produce the right results. But you have to establish those keys and set that culture. That’s where it begins.”
State
Continued from page 40
So leveraging these technologies and a really good user experience are going to be really important.”
That said, the current situation is also an opportu- nity to invest in technology, Moutray noted.
Foster agreed; when asked if robotics and AI will help relieve a qualified labor shortage, he answered, “most definitely. We used to be afraid that automa- tion, robotics, and AI were going to take jobs. Now, we are desperate for these technologies just to keep our heads above water by filling gaps and compensating for labor issues.”
Investing in the Future
BusinessWest: Finally, profits and ethics. How do we balance these two important pillars of business?
Loper: “You have to take the long view; you can’t just take the short view, as with those quarterly prof- its. And that quarterly review process that larger corporations, the Fortune 500 companies, have to
go through, makes it very difficult to make the right long-term decision. It’s very hard sometimes to make the right decision.
“When you talk about profits, I think you have
to understand that there are short-term profits and long-term profits, and it’s not all measured in dol- lars and cents. Sometimes it’s measured in terms of forests being destroyed that could affect the climate or natural resources being exploited that are not replaceable. This whole concept of conscious capital-
profit for people — and those companies are no lon- ger around.
“When you look at the overall value of what you’ve created as a business owner, it’s not just dollars, or profits — it’s how many families have you helped feed, or how many kids have you sent to college, or what you’ve done for the community — that should all be part of the profit equation. You can do both — you can have profits, and you can have a successful company and an ethical company. You can balance those two; ethics and profits don’t have to be mutu- ally exclusive. In fact, they should be working hand in hand. Ethical companies have a longer-term prospect than those looking at short-term gain, and we’ve seen that through history with companies that have failed. Why did they fail? It’s typically because of some short- term decision that someone made.”
“
others as you would have
them do unto you. It’s about
treating people with respect,
treating people the way you
”
Doran: “At Bay Path, our board is very focused on ESG [environmental, social, and governance] investing, and making sure that a company’s values align with our values, and of course we’re also very focused on making sure our portfolio performs, because it’s in the interest off our endowment that funds a large part of our scholarship program. And we’ve been doing some very technical comparisons [between] companies that are more ESG- focused and others that may not have it as a stated part of their practice ... and the returns are very similar. That shows that
It’s about doing unto
DREW DIGIORGIO
would want to be treated.
Moutray admits these have been trying times, not just during the pandemic, but before it, with trade wars and workforce issues that predate COVID-19.
“We’ve been talking about uncertainty as long as I’ve been at the NAM,” he said. “But I think manu- facturers have had to be smart about some of the
ism that encourages us to think bigger is not just a theory; there’s a whole collection of major corpora- tions that are part of that whole movement of shared value and conscious capitalism that are doing better on Wall Street than companies that don’t, that histori- cally have focused on a much narrower definition of ‘corporate profit.’ And I think that this is showing the rest of the world that you can do that, and the more global we’ve become, the more influence we’re going to have on that notion of what ‘profit’ really is. We need to have broader measures of success as compa- nies than just profits.”
Leary: “I agree. Short-term profits are not indica- tive of the long-term value of a company. With most companies on Wall Street, you’re looking at quick profits, and some of the biggest frauds that have committed at public companies were for short-term
moves they’ve made over the past couple years when it comes to supply-chain management or technology adoption or upscaling their workers, and that’s going
“If you’re an old-school
manufacturer and you’re not
leveraging these technologies, you’re
going to have more difficulty bringing
on this newer workforce.”
to pay off in spades moving forward. It’s not hard to be bullish about the manufacturing sector in terms of predicting growth and where it’s headed over the next few years.”
That said, he’s keeping a sharp eye on wage growth
profits and ethics do go hand in hand at many places. It should not be an anomaly, it should not be the exception, and I do not believe that it is.”
DePergola: “The real litmus test would be ... if the profit started to significantly slow down, would we still do the right thing? I think that confronts us with who we are. And if we’re not sure if we would do the right thing if the profit slows down, then we should take a look at that. Overall, Patrick and Sandra are right: profits and ethics are not mutually exclusive. Doing the right thing consistently over time, getting buy-in, and anchoring things to the mission — what we’re going to stand for no matter what — that’s what people want to be part of. And I think profit follows from that decision to do the right thing.” u
in 2022 as one of the key factors impacting manufac- turers. Bither agreed, but added that the supply chain is still the problem of the day when he considers why machines are down across the industry.
In truth, all these factors are important — and none are easily solved. But the webinar participants agreed that manufacturers are an innovative bunch, and ready for the challenges ahead.
“Manufacturing has been behind other industries, but it’s catching up. There’s a lot more investment on this space, more adaptation,” Bither said. “It’s a really exciting time to be in the industry. As technology pro- viders, we know we can get through the pandemic and all the other problems thrown our way.” u
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
44 FEBRUARY 7, 2022
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