For
over a quarter of a century, Cameron Hawley had two simultaneous successful
careers—as a businessman and as a writer of short stories in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, McCall’s, and Good Housekeeping. For several years, he was an advertising
executive in
Cameron
Hawley provides an honorable and favorable account of the majority of
businessmen in his excellent, suspenseful, and engaging 1952 novel, Executive Suite. A 1954 film adaptation
of the book stays rather close to the novel but is a bit more negative in its
depiction of people in business. Both the novel and film have a Randian feel
reminding one of an Ayn Rand novel. Overall, both versions provide a realistic
and positive image of the businessman, show the actual machinations and
politics of corporate life, communicate the drama and romance of business, and
make excellent business school case studies.
The
story begins with Avery Bullard, president of Tredway Corporation, in
Bullard
had lacked sufficient foresight to create a succession plan and to select an
executive vice-president soon after the death of executive vice-president, John
Fitzgerald. Many months had gone by without appropriate actions being taken. It
had taken pressure from investment fund executives for Bullard to give serious
attention to the development of a succession plan. He had been too busy
building the company to have given consideration with respect to who was going
to run it after he had retired.
After
meeting with Pilcher and Stiegel, Bullard wires his loyal and professional
secretary, Erica Martin, in
As
Bullard hails a taxi, a catastrophe occurs—he suffers a cerebral hemorrhage
just outside of Pilcher’s building. Bullard is not identified immediately
because his wallet had been picked up by a passerby who took the cash it held
and discarded it. All that is known to the authorities is that there is a John
Doe with the initials A.B.
In
the film version, it is George Caswell, Tredway board member and head of a
stock brokerage house, who witnesses Bullard’s death. He decides to sell
Tredway Stock short with the intention of repurchasing it at a lower price
after Bullard’s demise became publicly known. The success of Caswell’s scheme
depended upon Bullard’s passing being announced after Caswell borrowed and sold
Tredway shares but before the news of Tredway’s strong quarterly earnings
report (of which he is aware) is announced to the public. The use of such
knowledge is indicative of insider trading. Only then could he buy back and
replace the borrowed stock at a price lower than the one at which he had sold
it. It is interesting to note that in the movie it is Bruce Pilcher, rather
than Caswell, who first sees Bullard’s dead body and who schemes to sell
Tredway stock short. Pilcher, a candidate from a competing company who Bullard
has been considering for the executive vice-president position, is severely
chastised by his colleague, Julius Stiegel, for this devious stock scheme.
At
the six o’clock meeting, no one knows yet that Bullard is dead. In the film, it
is Caswell who phones a number of hospitals and eventually finds a short
article in the Friday evening paper about a John Doe with the initials A.B. in
the morgue. Caswell then phones the police and informs them that Avery Bullard
is the unidentified man in the morgue. However, in the novel, the woman who
picks up Bullard’s wallet feels guilty and calls the police after she reads the
small piece in the paper. Either way, news of Bullard’s death spread as the
evening goes on. With the death of the king and the lack of a succession plan,
the story shifts to the jockeying that takes place among five executives vying
for the throne: Loren P. Shaw, V.P. and
Comptroller; Frederick W. Alderson, V.P. and Treasurer; Don Walling, V.P. for Design and Development; Jesse Grimm, V.P.
for Manufacturing; and J. Walter Dudley, V.P. for Sales.
Loren
P. Shaw, vice president and comptroller, takes the lead to establish his power
immediately after finding out about Bullard’s passing. He takes it upon himself
to release positive financial information to the press and to set a date and
time for Bullard’s funeral. Shaw’s quick thinking keeps Tredway stock from
declining. Because the company has until Monday, quarterly financial reports are
sent out in Saturday’s newspapers, thus
ensuring that Tredway’s stock price would not fall. Shaw’s immediate action
gains favor throughout the company as well as with customers and suppliers.
Alderson
and Walling are proactive but not as much as Shaw is. When they arrive at
When
Alderson and Walling arrive to find Shaw making such decisions without
consulting the rest of the board, Alderson is infuriated because he knows that
Shaw disrespects Bullard. Alderson and Walling are in agreement in not wanting
Shaw to be president. Shaw is a planner and is excellent in the areas of cost
control, finance, budgeting, and so on. He seems to have an answer for almost
every situation. He is concerned with the company’s profits and with satisfying
stockholders. He is not concerned with the quality of the products and argues
that the (low) priced merchandise has an important place in Tredway’s profit
structure. Shaw is unimaginative and not particularly concerned with the morale
of the plant employees. He lacks long-term vision and does not see the big
picture for the company. Alderson and Walling blame Shaw, the efficiency
expert, for making Bullard recently lose sight of the Tredway tradition of
quality products.
Shaw
is a skilled, calculating, ambitious, and politically-astute businessman who is
relentless in his efforts to climb the corporate ladder. In the film he is
depicted as a ruthless and manipulative schemer who blackmails Caswell and
Dudley. Shaw makes a deal with Caswell that if Shaw is elected, then Caswell will
get back the Tredway shares he sold short at the price at which he had sold
them. In addition, having spied on Dudley, Shaw catches him in an affair and
blackmails
Walling
initially champions Alderson, Bullard’s right-hand man for a great many years,
for President. Alderson has the most tenure of the various vice-presidents but
he does not believe that he will be able to defeat Shaw. Although he has the
background, he does not think that he is the right fit to be president.
Alderson says that a younger man should take over. Alderson, Tredway’s
longest-serving executive and Bullard’s perennial second-in-command, does not
think that he has the passion and drive to succeed as president. He also firmly
believes that he is incapable of performing the job as well as Bullard had
done. The seasoned Alderson had been with Bullard from the beginning.
Before
Avery Bullard was president of Tredway, Oliver Tredway had been the head man.
He had built a large corporate office building,
Avery
Bullard began at Tredway as a salesperson, but he also became a designer and a
production specialist. He was an insightful man of superlative talent and keen
business sense who had a commanding presence and the loyalty, admiration, and
respect of his employees. Luigi, the elevator operator and Bullard’s best
friend, idolizes him, as does executive secretary, Erica Martin, as well as
most of the vice-presidents. All of the vice-presidents were affected by him as
he was personally involved in each of their areas. As a hands-on president, he
desired what was best for each of his vice-presidents. Bullard had assembled a
team of executives by capitalizing on their individual strengths and by keeping
each vice-president focused on his own special area. He was a one-man-show who
did not share his views and thoughts with the entire executive committee.
Although each executive knew about his particular areas and what Bullard wanted
from him, there was no brainstorming among the executive team members. The
executive committee was not a team. Each vice-president wanted Bullard’s
approval but was not concerned with what the other VPs thought of their
performance.
Bullard
had selected vice-presidents who had strengths and abilities in their
specialties. He, on the other hand, as president, had to have knowledge and
make decisions with respect to all of the areas of the business. Each VP had
in-depth knowledge of his own area but none of them understood the company as a
whole. Although Bullard was highly intelligent, charismatic, and had a powerful
personality, he could perhaps also be looked at as manipulative. A master of
psychology, he knew each of his VP’s talents, ambitions, motivations, desires,
and personalities so as to be able to predict their reactions and behaviors
and, at times, to play them off against one another. Most of the time, however,
he simply kept each VP focused on his area of specialization.
Bullard,
as the “one man” in the operation, valued building the business more than he
valued personal relationships, marriage, family, etc. His affair with Julia
Tredway, daughter of Orrin Tredway, had ended badly as Bullard could not
balance the challenges of work life and personal life. Julia had broken down
after her father’s suicide. She is now embittered because Bullard loved the
company more than he loved her.
Despite
his immense intelligence, Bullard overlooked the importance of having a
corporate succession plan. If a succession plan had existed, then we would have
had a very different story or perhaps no story at all. Bullard thought he would
be with the company for nine more years. If he had named a successor or had a
succession plan he would have, in a sense, been able to control, to a certain
degree, what happened to Tredway even after his demise.
Alderson
and Walling had noticed a recent progressive weakening of Bullard’s drive for
constant improvement. He recently lost his way and was losing ground to the
competition by producing a low quality line of furniture compared to that which
was previously produced.
At
first, Don Walling had wanted to support Alderson for president but Alderson
declines. Walling, a family man, initially considers himself to be too young
for that position. As an engineer, he is more interested in developing new
ideas, manufacturing processes, and innovative products.
Alderson
and Walling then turn to production man, Jesse Grimm, one of Bullard’s
favorites, but they learn that he intends to retire soon. Grimm had decided to
retire prior to Bullard’s death and had planned on announcing it the following
week at a board meeting. Grimm was selected by them because Alderson believed
that Dudley and Caswell would choose Shaw due to their business relationships
and friendships. Grimm, who considered himself to be a “real production man,”
was ready to take early retirement and hated Walling, the young production man
and “boy wonder,” for trying to be like Bullard. He tells Alderson that he will
vote for any of Alderson’s recommendations except for Walling. When Grimm had
originally built his factory in Millburgh, he had been worried that Bullard
would permit Walling to interfere. What happened was that Bullard detained
Walling in
J.
Walter Dudley, the affable and social sales and people person, knows how to
entertain and is the most-liked executive in the firm. He is cheating on his
wife and is not a serious candidate for president. Even if he were, at least in
the film version, he is being blackmailed for his vote by Shaw who catches
Dudley having the affair when he was supposed to be on a business trip to
Walling
was initially uninterested in gaining the presidency. He would rather develop
new products and more efficient manufacturing methods. In addition, Walling’s
wife, Mary, resented Bullard’s influence over her husband and wanted him to
leave the company. Walling did not want to work for Shaw and came to realize
that only Walling, himself, had the pride and passion to run the company. His
wife tries to talk him out of vying for the presidency and urges him to go out on
his own. Walling explains to his wife Shaw’s focus on cost-cutting and the
bottom line at the expense of the company’s quality, innovation, and
creativity. Walling tells her that his new process finally works but that it
cannot be implemented because of a budgetary directive issued by Shaw. Shaw’s
decisions keep Walling from implementing his design concepts. Walling wants to
improve existing products and to research new designs.
Throughout
his career, Walling has kept a balance between work life and family life and has
toiled alongside the plant workers. He takes pride in his work and is concerned
about the well-being of the employees. He listens to the factory workers who
are dissatisfied with the quality of the products they are producing. He knows
of long-time factory employees who refuse to work on Tredway’s low-quality
furniture line and take a pay cut to avoid working on that line. He knows that
people are motivated by pride in their accomplishments and not solely by money.
He wants all of Tredway’s employees to take pride in selling quality products
to loyal customers and to stand behind these products. Walling wants the
company to reinvest profits to develop quality products that elicit the pride
of the employees. He wants to relive his earliest experiences with the company
by building the best possible products. This approach will benefit customers,
employees, and shareholders alike.
Walling
realizes that the key to victory is the vote of board member Julia Tredway. He
approaches her to seek her support by convincing her that he is the right man
for the job. The unstable Julia does not seem to care about money, stock, or
the future of a company that has torn her life apart and has caused her so much
sadness. Walling’s plea convinces Julia to support him in the novel but not in
the film version. Unfortunately, in the film version, she had already given her
proxy to Shaw thus empowering him to vote her shares at the board meeting.
Shaw’s fatherly sympathy easily persuades the fragile and emotional Julia who
is devastated by the death of Bullard. Just before the meeting, although angry
and grieving, Julia changes her mind, tears up the document she had given to
Shaw, and goes to the meeting in executive suite to vote her shares for
herself.
In
the film, Alderson phones Walling’s wife and asks her to let Walling know that
he has been detained while picking up Grimm at the train station and wants to
have the vote postponed until the two of them arrive. She nearly sabotages her
husband’s chances by not giving him the message. Feeling guilty, she later goes
to executive suite to support her husband’s desire to be president and to ask
him to forgive her.
Shaw
begins the meeting without all of the board members present because he fears
that they may have plotted against him just as he has plotted against the
others.
In
the film, Alderson and Grimm arrive in time to hear Walling’s passionate and
motivational oration. In the novel, Alderson uses the drive time to clear up a
misunderstanding that Grimm had about Walling. Walling is a dynamic character
who has changed and developed into a creative, charismatic, strong, decisive,
and visionary leader with a future-orientation, much like Bullard had been.
Walling now displays characteristics that had been descriptive of Bullard.
Walling’s
impassioned speech applauds high quality production, recognizes the importance
of employees, and promises growth of the company. He says that men do not work
for money alone. They require work they can take pride in. In his speech,
Walling speaks of Bullard and how he had changed over time. He says that the
pride of one man is not enough to run a company. He believes that Tredway is
currently sacrificing quality and failing to take pride in its products. He
wants to get back into the business of building quality furniture. He says that
the plant workers want to do their best and to take pride in their work. Men
have to take pride in what they are doing. In the film version, he shows his
dissatisfaction with the low-cost KF line by picking up a table and breaking it,
thus making a compelling argument against producing sub-par products. He argues
that the men in the factory need pride and that the company should not
compromise the furniture’s beauty, function, and value. Walling observes that
Grimm wants to take pride in craftsmanship and that
Walling
shares his recollections of Bullard in this excerpt from this boardroom speech
in the novel:
“He was never
much concerned about money for its own sake. I remember his saying once that
dollars were just a way of keeping score. I don’t think he was too much
concerned about personal power, either—just power for power’s sake. I know
that’s the easy way to explain the drive that any great man has—the lust for
power—but I don’t think that was true of Avery Bullard. The thing that kept him
going was his terrific pride in himself—the driving way to do things that no
other man on earth could do. He saved the company when everyone else had given
up. He built a big corporation when everyone said that only small corporations
could succeed. He was only happy when he was doing the impossible—and he did
that only to satisfy his own pride. He never asked for applause or
appreciation—or even for understanding. He was a lonely man but I don’t think
that his loneliness ever bothered him very much. He was the man at the top of
the tower—figuratively as well as literally. That was what he wanted. That is
what it took to satisfy his pride… He never realized that other men had to be
proud, too—that the force behind a great company had to be the pride of more
than one man—that it had to be the pride of thousands of men.”(332-333)
Toward the end
of the film, Walling explains it like this to Julia Tredway:
“The force
behind a great company has to be more than the pride of one man. It has to be
the pride of thousands. You can’t make men work for money alone. You starve
their souls when you try it. And you can starve a company to death the same
way. Avery Bullard must have known that once, but he’d become a little lost
these last few years. The company had been saved; there was no more battles to
win. Now he had to find something else to feed his pride—bigger sales, more
profits, something. And that’s when we started doing things like this—the KF
line.”
In
his closing speech in the film he says:
“We’ll have a
line of low-priced furniture, a new and different line—as different from
anything we’re making today as a modern automobile is different from a covered
wagon. That’s what you want, Walt, isn’t it—what you’ve always wanted?
Merchandise that will sell because it had beauty, function, and value—not
because the buyer likes your scotch or think that you’re a good egg. The kind
of stuff that you, Jesse, will feel in your guts when you know it’s coming off
your production line. A kind of product that you will be able to budget to the nearest hundredth of
a cent, Shaw, because it will be scientifically
and efficiently designed. And something you will be proud to have your
name on, Miss Tredway.”
Walling’s
speech wins the hearts and minds of all of the board members, including Shaw,
Walling chooses Shaw to be his executive vice-president and to help him keep
his feet on the ground. Both Walling and Shaw are right and they need one
another. The company can both have a quality product and produce it in a
cost-effective manner. Walling and Shaw shake hands and become working partners
with each bringing his specific strengths and perspectives to the boardroom.
Until
the company’s succession crisis, Tredway’s executive group had never acted as
an effective team. Because there was no executive vice-president to take
charge, they were forced to come together and ultimately to work as a team.
The
idea of the importance of time constraints, pressures, and deadlines in business
permeates Executive Suite from
beginning to end. The film begins with the ominous ringing of the chimes in