Re: Kodak

[P3D <norml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What Eric has written (below) is true. The shareholder is a single-minded
creature chasing only profits.

But the great American enterprises that began to arise just before the
turn of the century were originally controlled by founders who
were intrigued by the intrinsic interest and value of their work as well
as by making money.

Eastman, Sarnoff, Firestone, Edison, Ford and their ilk had the personal
clout to fend off shareholders for long periods of time. Sarnoff, for
example, fought off repeated shareholder attacks to continue funding
color TV research when the shareholders wanted the money paid as dividends.

Today, Gates, et. al., have some of the clout to do a lot of that--and
some of them do

As commercial organizations mature and their founders die, the so-called 
professional managers, responsible first to shareholders and only
secondarily to customers takes over and every value other than making
money necessarily goes out the window.

One of the things that the managers coming out of American business
schools seem not to understand is the synergy of continuing to supply 
niche products as a means of maintaining customer loyalty.

George Eastman understood that. I was shocked in Rochester last year to find
that his corporate heirs and assigns are above providing any kind of visitor
services.

The credo of American business today can be summed up easily: "What's the
least we can do and still get their money?"

Norm Lehfeldt 

<SNIPS>
>The fiduciary responsibility of the officers of publically held
>companies is the drive quarterly profits and to show quarterly growth.
>Period. Like Allen W, I personally decry it as an untimate or singular
>goal, and believe it contributes to some very unfortunate and
>destructive ecomonic pressures and resultant social consequence. But
>that is reality in corporate America as we currently know it.
<SNIPS>
>
>Eric G.


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