Corporate Diplomats

Corporate leaders must ensure that their organizations are socially responsible and keep their commitments. Our leading principle must be integrity, not earnings or imposing “the American way.” We must respect and understand other cultures, listening to international employees and letting business flow with the local culture, business practices, and legal systems, while maintaining corporate values.

Michael L. Eskew, chairman and CEO of UPS, is a model of corporate diplomacy. He chairs the U.S.–China Business Council and is a member of the President’s Export Council and the Business Roundtable. (Eskew has ties to Minnesota as a director of 3M.) He has said, “There is no greater agent working for sustained economic development, peace, and stability than the force of increased trade between nations. Because that bridge links more than commerce. It links cultures and people. It links lives.”

Eskew does more than talk about this. UPS facilities in Thailand often include Buddhist shrines; pictures of the Madonna are found in UPS facilities in Latin America. Of the company’s 40,000 employees at facilities outside the United States, fewer than 40 are Americans. The relationship that local workers have with this leading American corporation is stronger than any government policy can be.

It’s important in making efforts like these to understand that the current anti-Americanism is not just a European backlash against the American-led invasion of Iraq, or a recent outgrowth of Muslim extremism. Goodwill toward this country has been eroding over the past two decades. U.S. corporate scandals have contributed to that. So has what some in other countries see as an invasion of American popular culture, and the imposition of “the American way” as our companies have expanded overseas. Our businesses have been complicit in producing a growing anti-American feeling over many years. We can’t just blame the politicians for this one, folks!

Leaving a Legacy

One of the greatest foreign policy plans of the past century was the European Recovery Program, also known as the Marshall Plan, which was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding post–World War II Europe and repelling communism.

Fifty years later, historians debate what the legacy of the Marshall Plan is. Some hail it as a success of American generosity. Others say the plan was simply “American economic imperialism,” with geopolitical goals, not generosity, at its core. Or they say that the plan simply benefited the U.S. economy by creating a market for its trade surpluses. Finally, some believe that the Marshall Plan didn’t contribute much to the rebuilding of Europe at all, and say that economic growth would have occurred anyway. Meanwhile, there are calls to reconstitute the plan as a new “International Marshall Plan” to help developing countries.

My point is that even 50 years later, there’s still political debate over one of the most significant foreign policy decisions in recent history. So don’t get sidelined by political debate over the current U.S. foreign policy and the Iraq war; recognize that debate is at the heart of democracy, and we should embrace it.

Focus on what you can change, not what you can’t. Start by taking actions personally and in your own business that will contribute to a legacy of peace for future generations. Through a blend of ethical international business leadership and foreign policy, you can become the type of leader our world needs: a corporate diplomat.