here as slaves by force hundreds of years ago, continued to be ‘‘eco-
nomic aliens’’ until very recently. Levi Strauss sought to integrate these
‘‘aliens’’ into the economic mainstream before it was fashionable and
before the law said they ‘‘had to.’’ In 1959, several years before the
Civil Rights Act, Levi Strauss integrated their plant in Blackstone, Vir-
ginia. In contrast to those Southern schools who would later ‘‘close
their public doors’’ and become private schools rather than integrate,
Levi Strauss insisted they would close their plant if it was not integrated.
Local officials then asked for separate rest rooms for whites and blacks,
as well as separate cafeterias. Then-CEO Walter Haas, Jr., refused.
Needless to say, wages for the ‘‘Israelites’’ (the white population) and
the ‘‘aliens’’ (the black population) were the same, as the biblical pre-
cepts command.
A young leader who wants to make sure no members of his team feel
like ‘‘aliens’’ is Mark Elliott, director of data center services at NYCE
Corporation. Elliott directs three departments in two different loca-
tions. ‘‘It could be very easy to treat some better and some worse; one
is in a remote location in Michigan,’’ he notes. (Elliott is headquartered
in New Jersey.) ‘‘If I were to start treating people differently across
borders, some people would feel like outcasts, and I don’t want that to
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happen, so I try to allocate resources fairly and pay equal attention to all facilities.’’
But Elliott also has a ‘‘problem within a problem.’’ Within his New
Jersey facility, the computer operations department often feels like an
‘‘alien outcast’’; a group that, although essential to operation, is often
looked down upon as the ‘‘grunts’’ who have to work twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week. Because they are also physically sepa-
rated from the rest of the group, Elliott emphasized computer opera-
tions’ integral membership on the team by adding nameplates for each
individual at the entrance to the operations area.
There was also an ‘‘alienation’’ aspect to the company picnics and
holiday parties. Some operations employees missed these events every
year because they had to be on duty at the computer center. Elliott
wanted to be fair, so now for people who have to work through the
picnics and parties he issues theater tickets, gift certificates, and vouchers to restaurants (where the food may be even better than at the picnic).
He also puts up the operations employees at hotels when technical or
weather emergencies force them to stay late or overnight.
Says one member of the operations group, ‘‘We feel part of the orga-
nization now, and we didn’t before. We felt like stepchildren.’’ Says
Elliott, ‘‘I try to manage according to the ‘justice’ theme. I want to be
that light in the fog. I want my team to say, ‘He’s standing there with
the light, and he will be fair and lead us to results.’ ’’4
Elliott’s vision of just leadership echoes the last words of King David:
‘‘When one rules over men in righteousness . . . he is like the light of
morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain
that brings grass from the earth.’’ (2 Sam. 23:4)
Another company where a group of outsiders initially felt mistreated
and excluded was Inland Steel. Four young African-American profes-
sionals felt that ‘‘whenever you were involved in meetings, you always
felt like you were not part of the group . . . that you were invisible . . .
We were taught by our families to work hard and get ahead, only to
find that the doors were closed.’’
The young managers went to Steve Bowsher, their white manager,
because of his reputation for fairness. They complained about lack of
opportunity to advance and seemingly ‘‘harmless’’ but racist jokes.
Justice and Fairness
181
Bowsher felt he had missed the full impact of their comments, proba-
bly because he had no experience as an oppressed minority. The only
way he could learn how to ‘‘do unto others’’ was to experience what
had happened to them.
So Bowsher went to a race relations seminar at the Urban Crisis
Center, where the leader, Dr. Charles King, talked about his humiliating
experiences in the white world. Ironically, Bowsher experienced some
of this exclusion and humiliation himself when the blacks and women
in the workshop (now the ‘‘majority’’) ignored him (the white male
‘‘minority’’). When Bowsher returned to the workplace, he announced
to his young black managers, ‘‘I’ve had a traumatic experience . . . I
think I can understand you now.’’
Once he understood and felt the injustice of racism, Bowsher became
a crusader for justice. He instituted a mandatory career planning pro-
gram for all employees so that all felt they had a chance to develop
themselves and advance. He gave what he termed ‘‘The Sermon on the
Mount’’ to a group of executives, in which he strongly advocated gen-
der and racial equality in hiring and advancement. He recommended
that the president of Inland Steel attend Dr. King’s workshop, and he
brought Dr. King to Chicago to address his team when he took over as
president of Ryerson Coil, a subsidiary of Inland.
Bowsher found that racial and gender equality often lead to greater
profitability. The formerly unprofitable Ryerson division was profitable
within one year after he took over. And the black managers who gave
him the ‘‘call to justice’’ now say they feel evaluated based primarily on
performance. Tyrone Banks, one of these managers, notes a feeling that,
‘‘I have a place here, that my ideas will be appreciated, that my perfor-
mance will be rewarded.’’5 That’s true justice.
There is another type of justice emphasized in the Bible: concern for
the poor, the sick, and the disabled. In Ezekiel 16, the city of Jerusalem
is compared with her ‘‘sister,’’ Sodom, whose inhabitants were ‘‘arrogant,
overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and the needy.’’
This would be an accurate criticism of some modern corporations, but
certainly not UPS, which has a community service program for manag-
ers. One of the volunteers who had his horizons of justice expanded
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
was David Reid, an operations division manager in Salt Lake City, who
worked with disabled residents of a community center.
Reid worked directly with a woman who had cerebral palsy. Her
main focus was to be able to tilt her head enough to drive her wheel-
chair. ‘‘It’s easy to take things for granted when you see something like
that,’’ observes Reid.
And Reid had indeed been taking similar things for granted at his
own workplace, resulting in some injustices that he did not appreciate
at the time. For example, he had once warned an employee that he
might lose his job when he asked for time off to help his wife care for
their disabled child. An administrator of the community service pro-
gram observes, ‘‘You can get locked into that ‘I’ve got boxes to move
and people to move those boxes’ thing, but those people have to move
themselves, and those people have to be treated with fairness and dig-
nity to do it well.’’6
Mark Colvard, another UPS manager from Toledo, was assigned to
McAllen, Texas, to work with poor Hispanics. He served lunch at a
hospice, worked with incarcerated youth, and built an addition onto a
house to accommodate a family of seven. He feels he’s a better manager
now: ‘‘I wasn’t as open as I am now. I take more time with people.’’
He’s also kinder; he had previously turned down a temporary worker’s
request to go full time because ‘‘it wasn’t in the budget,’’ but now he
‘‘found’’ the dollars by reducing overtime. The real reason he made the
hire? ‘‘It was the right thing to do.’’
Ironically, Colvard’s numbers haven’t suffered from all this infusion
of justice; in fact, they’ve improved. ‘‘I’m closer to my business plan
than I’ve ever been. If my experience in McAllen has anything to do
with that, I need to go back.’’7
The Bible also makes special provision for justice to the poor. Deu-
teronomy 15 states:
Do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brothers. Rather
be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs . . . Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.
Justice and Fairness
183
Gun Denhart of Hanna Anderson has followed this command with
her Hannadowns program. Most of us who have or have had young
children are familiar with the Hanna Anderson catalog of fine, colorful
cotton clothing. Many of us do not realize that Hanna Anderson has a
program, Hannadowns, that funnels customers’ outgrown clothing di-
rectly to people who ordinarily could never afford Hanna Anderson
clothing but need clothing desperately.
Any Hanna Anderson customer can return outgrown clothes and
receive a 20 percent credit on the purchase price. The clothes are do-