Chief Executive (U.S.) articles from January 2003

Chief Executive (U.S.) archives from January 2003

Feedback.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2003... Don't Blame Shareholder Value Robert Bennett made a number of important points about what is wrong with the current state of corporate ethics in his November article, "High Earnings, Low Ethics." However, in his attempt to address the root...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
January 1, 2003... Rick George was incompletely identified in November's column by Deroy Murdock, "U.S. Should Cultivate Friendly Oil." George is the CEO of Suncor Energy. Chief Executive regrets the error. Photos of J.D. Edward's Hank Bonde, left, and...

Meet your new market. (Editor's Note).(understanding the customer)
January 1, 2003... I have good news: Your customers--you remember them, the people who used to buy things from you in 2000, before they went into hiding?--would like to meet you. But be forewarned: They've changed a little--a lot, actually--since then, and it may...

Boeing weighs costs and lives. (Dilemma).(adding antimissile shields to planes)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Deciding whether to lay off employees used to be the toughest decision a CEO faced. But times have changed, and for some chief executives the true gut-wrencher is no longer about hiring and firing. It's about life and death. When two...

Productivity Preview.(executive forecast survey)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... PRODUCTIVITY PREVIEW CEOs in the United States are more optimistic than their overseas counterparts about the prospect for increased productivity in 2003, according to a survey of 2,700 CEOs from nine countries. Last years, American...

Britain's Martha comes to the states. (Arrivals).(Anne McKevitt)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... DID YOU KNOW THAT carnations stay fresher in fizzy lemonade instead of water? Or that you can keep rust off garden tools by storing them in a bucket of sand tossed with vegetable oil? Such are the preoccupations of a Martha Stewart shopper....

History Project.(women entrepreneurs )
January 1, 2003... History Project Unsung Heroines A NEW NATIONAL EXHIBIT, Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business, brings a measure of belated celebrity to early American women entreprenuers, who contended with all the requisite rigors of...

Corporate Reform.(disciplining executives accused of approving false financial statements )
January 1, 2003... Corporate reform What if Congress Had Cracked Down Sooner? CEOS WHO VOUCHSAFED faulty filings before Sarbanes-Oxley went into effect should be counting their blessings. The Act upped the personal stakes. As of July 30, the CEO and...

The rebirth of online advertising. (By the Numbers).(related article: Spam Report)
January 1, 2003... Chief Executive's new column "By the Numbers" will offer a snapshot of a different industry every month -- beginning with technology -- and deliver forecasts from experts on the year ahead. Though not yet up to the heady levels of dot-com...

Put your CIO through the hoops. (C-Suite Confidential).(chief information officer of Delphi, Peter Janak)(Interview)
January 1, 2003... Ask an impertinent question, get a pertinent answer. Enter "C-Suite Confidential." "In this new, bimonthly column, Chief Executive will ask prominent senior executives -- beginning with a CIO -- the questions you didn't dare. Is your...

China imports self-help. (Market Horizons).(adopting Western business ideas)
January 1, 2003... Last year we were traveling in China, riding the overnight train from Xi'an to Luoyang. It was crowded and loud. The only quiet person was a young man engrossed in a book. It took us awhile to recognize the Western face on the book's cover. The...

Commercial speech: set it free. (Competing Interests).
January 1, 2003... Corporations increasingly find themselves embroiled in worldwide controversies. Simply to sell their wares, companies now must prove their products are eco-friendly, low-calorie and sweatshop-free, but corporate America usually fights these...

Your stock is undervalued? Join the club. (Chief Concern).(home building industry)
January 1, 2003... Too many CEOs in industries with relatively small market capitalizations have to spend too much of their time trying to educate the investment community. Unfortunately, analysts often fail to devote time to understanding the complex changes...

Notes from the unemployed. (Capitol Ideas).(imagined note from Paul O'Neill to new Treasury Secretary John W. Snow)
January 1, 2003... When John W Snow, chairman of CSX, takes Paul O'Neill's place as Treasury Secretary, lie may find a handwritten note from his predecessor taped inside a desk drawer: It probably reads something like this: Dear John, Welcome to the...

Guarded optimism. (Management).(executive survey on economic, business outlook)
January 1, 2003... Still chastened by a slow economy, CEOs offer a mixed outlook for 2003. They're loathe to spend lavishly, but corporate purse strings aren't completely tied. As chief executive of Staples, Ron Sargent knows all to well the lengths some...

Danger abroad. (Global).(anti-Americanism threatens overseas operations)(related article: Best Practices for Crisis Management)
January 1, 2003... Growing anti-American sentiment is threatening the safety of U.S. companies overseas. Find out what some CEOs are doing to protect against harm. The scene: outside the United States Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on July 29, 2002, four...

Wake of the flood: the accounting scandals weren't all bad. Yes, they shook investor confidence. But they're also driving overdue changes in financial reporting. (Finance).
January 1, 2003... It's all a matter of perspective. What some consider a catastrophic flood, others deem a cleansing bath. Witness the wave of bad news that began with stirrings of scandal at Enron and built over the past year into a crisis of confidence in...

Lessons from the ant farm: looking for efficient solutions to tough problems? Forget corporate case studies. Embrace the offbeat. (Innovation).
January 1, 2003... Who would have thought that ants could teach lessons in logistics? Or that invisible and intangible assets could leave such indelible marks on a company's bottom line? Yet in an economy that increasingly relies more on ideas and individuals...

Flying high: Embraer's Mauricio Botelho has taken a flagging, state-owned company and turned it into the fourth-largest aircraft maker in the world. (Profile).
January 1, 2003... At age 26, Mauricio Botelho left his hometown of Rio de Janeiro to take a job in the Amazon jungle. A promising mechanical engineer, he signed on to help build a sawmill on Marajo Island in northern Brazil. Given the remote location, the...

Digital detectives: companies turn to cybersleuths to protect their assets from an online black market. (Technology).(selling counterfeit products on the Internet)(related article: KeyBank Uncovers Cybersquatters and Hate Sites)
January 1, 2003... The email was addressed to the CEO of a large Midwestern manufacturer of consumer electronics. "Send us $250,000," it read, "and we'll supply you with the names of individuals running a factory counterfeiting your product." The CEO knew...

Taking the back road: how one CEO's love of travel inspired a company that offers vigorous activity with all the comforts of home. (Executive Life).(Tom Hale of tour operator Backroads)(Company Profile)
January 1, 2003... Jim Bildner used to organize his own bicycling vacations. He would plan the itinerary and book accommodations, make reservations at restaurants, hire guides and arrange for equipment. But as chairman and CEO of Tier Technologies, a Boston-based...

Take a breather: more stressed out than ever, CEOs turn to simple pleasures to relax. (Health).
January 1, 2003... When the stress of running a company in the ultracompetitive semiconductor industry threatens to overwhelm Steve Sanghi, he turns to, of all things, breathing exercises he learned at his wife's prenatal classes. "If I can take one minute...

When Wall Street was cool. (Flip Side).(fickle individual investors)
January 1, 2003... Conventional wisdom states that the stock market is unlikely to make a significant, sustained upward move until ordinary investors get back into the game. Individual investors, whose collective worth runs into the billions of dollars, are...

The view from the edge.(role of chief executive officers )(related article: Outflanking Competitors in a Downturn)
January 1, 2003... As business weather the wrath of disgruntled investor and the stormy winds of a volatile marketplace, the once-lofty post of the chief executive now seems more like a scary precipice. High-profile CEOs like Worldcom's Bernard J. Ebbers and...

Winning through incremental innovation.
January 1, 2003... Mention innovation, and most people think of blockbuster, breakthrough products or concepts -- the Canon inkjet printer, 3M's Post-It note, Fedex's overnight delivery service, the Sony Walkman. But as wonderful as revolutionary innovations can,...

The CEO as change leader.
January 1, 2003... To meet the diverse challenges facing your company, take a deeper look at the fundamentals and assess the leadership needed to take you to the next level. "You can either lead change or you can suffer from it," said Sir Deryk Maughan,...

Net worth: capturing the customer.(customer service)
January 1, 2003... Faced with intense competition and demanding consumers, companies are recognizing the value of delivering a positive customer experience from start to finish. When it comes to building brand awareness, the AFLAC duck is a clear winner....