Arthur Rock Quotes

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

I think most corporate executives are good honorable honest men and women who do good work.

'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

We have to raise the bar on corporate governance. Shareholders want ethical behavior and honesty.

Excessive pandering to stockholders is as bad as any other form of pandering

In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm.

We've got some well-run corporations by some well-intended people who do it right.

I don't feel I'm at liberty to speak about the actions of any one CEO. That's not fair; given CEOs have duties to their shareholders.

The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs.

We're all shareholders. These guys below me, they see the CEO taking it easy, it's their money.

I think good companies can navigate being public and doing the right things for their customers.

Not only is self-regulation largely a fantasy, but repeated scandals across multiple industries have proved that companies are fundamentally incapable of self-regulating for the greater good.

The future of any corporation is as good as the value system of the leaders and followers in the organization.

A social contract is the way out of this dilemma for corporations that want to lead in the 21st century by showing consumers how seriously they take customer loyalty and goodwill.

The history of business has shown that companies usually only regulate themselves if they're forced to by legislation, or out of self-interest - often in the shape of a marketable message that will help sell more products.

I don't represent corporations.

Businesspeople get a little bit of bad press sometimes. There are a lot of normal and ethical people.

It's pretty rare to have CEOs or high level executives at big companies who are social activists. They tend not to be drawn to those areas of life.

Business practices and how we treat the planet are also in desperate need of re-humanization.

Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.

The worst story I ever wrote was after the conviction of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay. My co-author and I wrote a piece for 'Fortune' saying everything's going to be different now.

By the time of the '90s boom, CEOs had become superheroes, accorded celebrity treatment and followed with a kind of slavish scrutiny that Alfred P. Sloan could never have imagined.

There's been a sea change in our focus on corporate ethics. We've made more progress in the last three years than the previous 30.

People should be encouraged by things like awards given for corporate governance practices.