Monthly Memos

Today's Challenge And The Minnesota Tradition

Charles I. Mundale
Executive Director of MCCR

August 1994

"A stable, healthy community is not just good for the bottom line; it is the bottom line." William Andres, former CEO of the Dayton Hudson Corporation, said that. The Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility was established by a group of business leaders who assumed an essential, insoluble connection between business and community. They believed that the basis of free enterprise, open markets, and business organization was a franchise from the community, not a law of God or nature. As long as business served the general welfare of the community as a whole, the franchise would remain. To assure the longevity of the franchise, they established an organization to consider -- in the words of one of the founding documents -- "the problems and shortcomings of conventional business practices." In other words, they assumed responsibility to subject their own actions as business managers to a standard that included profit but went beyond it.

The behavior of these leaders struck some as idealistic, others as naive, and still others as heretical or even "un-American." It may, in fact, have been all of the above, but it definitely was not "un-Minnesotan." And it was not long before the parallels between their action and those of generations of earlier Minnesota business leaders gave rise to talk of a "Minnesota Tradition."

The Minnesota Tradition was one of public/ private partnership, a willingness to work together, to forego personal or group interest in order to promote the "common good." The Tradition was begun by Yankee entrepreneurs who welcomed the challenge of the frontier but also remembered--and missed--the cultural amenities, which, by the late 19th century, were well established in the East.

In business, they took the initiative: to supply the needs of a growing population and build the companies and infrastructure that would create and sustain development. In the process, they made money. Some of them, a great deal of it. But these early titans also took responsibility: to establish schools, to found a university, to build churches and concert halls, to import art and artists and build museums. In the process, they built a community, one that has been repeatedly cited for its superb quality of life.

As the decades passed, Minnesota business people demonstrated power and adaptability in the market, developing new major industries as old ones matured or became obsolete. Meanwhile, the state's reputation for education and other social investment continued to grow.

Thus, The Minnesota Tradition was created by business leaders who addressed both the business and the social challenges of their time. In our time, businesses face a competitive and unfamiliar global market; technology is revolutionizing manufacturing, product lines, marketing techniques, and organizational structure. Meanwhile, the vital signs of our communities show serious weakness.

Preserving The Minnesota Tradition means 1) attending creatively and prudently to business and 2) attending with equal commitment to the community.

For our time, the MCCR Board of Directors, with the advice of its Strategic Planning Committee, has concluded that the challenges we must address lie in three related sets of issues: our core cities, work-and-family policy, and education.

If that sounds like an echo of Mr. Andres's definition of the bottom line, it's because it is.

For MCCR and its mission, no one ever said it better.

Center for Ethical Business Cultures

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