Leadership in the Headlines

Introduction

In June 2013, I interviewed John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, the US-based chain of natural food shops and leading light of the ‘conscious capitalism’ movement.¹ He is a man of contradictions. As I wrote at the time:

He is a vegan whose shops sell meat; a strong advocate of staff welfare who opposes unionisation; and a vendor of expensive organic food whose latest venture is an outlet in recession-battered midtown Detroit.

He came across as suspicious of journalists – perhaps justifiably. He was bruised in 2009 when he wrote an article criticising President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms that prompted customers sympathetic to the policy to attack him and triggered a rash of news coverage that he judged unsympathetic. ...