Re: Great IS and JC Quotes
In the 50's JC did not have to
1) run a publicly run company. He tried it and took it private.
2) compete against non-union competitors.
3) compete in a global economy
It's a different world but you do wonder what his opinion would be in the spirit of
". . . a hard part of management’s problem is to know when to make changes and when to hold fast to what is still good." Jim Casey 1948
Thanks for your excellent comments. The quote below is lifted from a pretty good post on Google Finance post (
http://finance.google.com/group/google.finance.663844/msg/358c25291940a57d )
[[[ "James Casey's most enduring legacy, even more so than his
business achievements, is the work culture at UPS. "The basic
principle which I believe has contributed more than any other to the
building of our business as it is today," he said in 1955, "is the
ownership of our company by the people employed in it." Casey's belief
in being privately held was in part a reflection of his own closely
guarded persona. "We have kept confidential facts and figures pretty
close to ourselves," he once said, "as most prudent people would do
with their own private affairs."
But that attitude was definitely
shaped by what was perhaps the biggest threat UPS ever faced: Its
abortive attempt to go public in 1929. There's little information on
it, and Casey never liked discussing the move. "The arrangement did
not work out entirely as contemplated" was about as expansive as he
got, and UPS managers were able to recover all the stock by 1933.
After that he routinely dismissed publicly traded companies as being
owned by "absentee stockholders" and run by "hired men." . ]]]
