The Corporate Chiefs' New Class

Executive View Marshall Loeb

Irving Shapiro, a charter member, calls them the class of the '70s. They are the unique and rather brotherly band who became chief executives of some of America's largest corporations in the past decade, and by many measures they have changed the nation as much as did the clamorous '60s kids. These corporate chiefs are activists in society and politics, for they know that no company is an island; none can prosper for long if the country is unsound.

Now, quite a few leaders of the class of the '70s are about to make their valedictory. "We are all getting close to retirement age," says Shapiro, 63, who in 15 months has to leave the chairmanship of Du Pont, the chemicals colossus. "It will be a challenge for companies to produce the same kind of group in the 1980s."

But what a band they have been. In the inner circle is Shapiro, son of Lithuanian immigrants (Father was a pants presser, Mother a sweatshop garment worker), who got a law degree on loans from the University of Minnesota, and says, "I've always wanted to be sure that I didn't take more from the system than I was putting back." There is Shapiro's friend Reg Jones, a British-born intellectual, who has been similarly motivated to repay the society in which he climbed to become chairman of General Electric. And Citicorp's Walter Wriston, imbued with public commitment by his father, a university president who was also a high Government adviser. And A T & T's former Chairman John deButts, the courtly North Carolinian, who cherishes the Southern tradition of public service. And many more.

Together and separately they lobby U.S. Presidents and Congressmen and city councilors to adopt laws that would promote jobs for deprived minorities and investment for capital-starved companies. They often recruit each other for public interest projects, major and modest. When Manhattan College, a Catholic institution, needed money recently, its fund-raising load was carried by GM's Thomas Aquinas Murphy, DeButts and Shapiro. A few months earlier the same three men, a neatly balanced ticket, did the same thing for Yeshiva University, a Jewish institution. They and others are prime movers of the Business Roundtable, which has replaced some more regressive groups as the premier public policy arm of corporate America. A few years ago, his peers selected Irv Shapiro to head the Roundtable. When Shapiro, who is a Jew, a Democrat and a lawyer, was chosen in 1974 as chairman of Du Pont, which had been led by Christian, Republican, financial and technical men, it seemed that almost any American could hope to become chief of almost any U.S. company.

While managing a $12.6 billion-a-year U.S. firm, Shapiro appears to spend almost as much time in Washington as in Wilmington, Del. He persuaded business chiefs and the B'nai B'rith to accept a sensible compromise U.S. policy for dealing with the Arab boycott of Israel. He travels the country making speeches laden with proposals to stimulate U.S. technology by giving inventors more patent protection and to improve the judicial system by increasing the number of judges and more closely scrutinizing their performance.

"It is startling how much corporate America has changed," says Shapiro. "In the past, businessmen wore blinders. After hours, they would run to their club, play golf with other businessmen, have a martiniand that was about it. They did not see their role as being concerned with public policy issues. In a world where Government simply took taxes from you and did not interfere with your operations, maybe that idea was sensible. In today's world, it is not. I'm much more interested in what Russell Long thinks than what some businessman thinks. And you can find out from Russell Long very simply what he thinks."

Yet sometimes a small concern nags at Shapiro. "I worry that businessmen may lose perspective and get greedy, pressing for their own self-interest." Then he is reassured when he looks at some newer people who are rising in companies. Says Shapiro: "Most of the new chiefs understand the outside world, and they can deal with policy issues in America and abroad. If I were choosing a chief executive, I would not be overly concerned with his education or specific background. I would ask if he relates to the larger world, or if he knows how to produce widgets but cannot do anything else."

In Shapiro's view, the most important problem facing the new class of business leaders, the class of the '80s, will be to find jobs for unemployed city blacks and Hispanics. Industry simply will have to apply more of its brain power and resources to that American dilemma. "Business and labor and government will have to come together to tutor and train perhaps half a million kids for jobs."

He sees new coalitions forming. Business schools and schools of government will link together because their interests are so close. Government may wisely choose to exploit more of the talents of business people. "We have to have something like the Manhattan Project. The Government ought to tap eight or ten very able people and tell them it is their public duty to drop what they are doing and help carry out a program to make fuels from coal and shale. We ought to be putting people like Reg Jones and John deButts and Exxon's Cliff Garvin to work in Washington."

Shapiro has no false hopes that businessmen will be loved. "Except in wartime, business is never going to be a popular force in this country. Our goal should be to create an arm's-length but nonadversary relationship between business and Government. Business is a means to an end. It's not an end in itself. There is not much point in being a businessman if you're not going to accomplish something that benefits society."

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