Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership

Chapter 19. Reframing Ethics and Spirit

What shall an organization profit if it should gain the world but lose its soul?^[11] For Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, the answer is "not a lot," which is why he raised exactly that question in a memo to everyone in his company in 2007, as described in Chapter Twelve. In the case of Enron, the answer was evidently "nothing at all"; the company eventually lost both its soul and the world it hoped to gain. Enron was America's largest gas pipeline company when Kenneth Lay took over as chief executive in 1985. At the time, it was a solid but pedestrian business. It was a strong competitor in its industry, but demand was flat, and profits cycled with fluctuations in the price of gas (Bodily and Bruner, 2002). ...