| Importance of Behaving Honestly and Ethically | |
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Norb Mayrhofer Biography
General Manager, North American Commercial Products, Procter & Gamble Norb Mayrhofer - Interview - Procter & Gamble October 05, 2004 2 min. 45 sec. Mayerhofer17_ethics Appreciate this clip:
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Transcript
You know, we were not - we were not brought up to cheat the system. In fact the - and I know that probably sounds Pollyannaish and naive. But we just weren't. And I just don't - I don't live my life that way. And I don't - it's not that I don't try to change the rules. But once rules are established and I understand them, I try to kind of live within them. So from a very base - and Procter & Gamble is that way. Procter & Gamble has a great track record of I think honest and ethical behavior around the world. It's expected. So that's one. The other one is that - I use this line sometimes. You know, it will feel good today, but tomorrow it won't. You know. So there is a conscience issue here in part. And I'll give you an example. It was a very well publicized thing with the U.S. Food Service Division of ?. Okay? A lot of executives were terminated. All kinds of stock issues and all that kind of stuff. We were squeezed by them dramatically. They tried to anyway. And that decision took three seconds to make. No, we're just not going to participate. And I had the - I had a very senior guy there you know, call me up and say you don't understand what's going to happen to you. And I said there isn't anything you can do to me that's going to bother me. Now our business with them was cut in half. And I explained that up to our senior management. And every one of them said you did the right thing. So in our company, it is expected that we're going to behave honestly and ethically. The other thing I would say is that I have the greatest respect for our competitors. They have created - and I know a lot of them personally. I mean, through business - you know, industry associations and what not. They have created, and they manage ethical companies that have been very successful in the marketplace that have created great shareholder wealth. And I think for the most part they've done it by being you know, reasonably above board too. Every now and then you run into something and you say, ah, it doesn't feel very good. You know. I wonder how validated - how the heck they got there. But for me personally, it's not really much of an issue. Procter & Gamble I think in this way - Procter & Gamble's thinking about that and mine are very common in that. Not only from a - you know, this is what Mom used to say. Procter & Gamble goes into these markets thinking about them in terms of decades, okay? And a foundation that's built on something that's less than savory isn't going to last. It's just not going to hang around. So we just don't do it.
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