Merchants of Vision: People Bringing New Purpose and Values to Business

In our time of dramatic worldwide change, can business leaders meet the challenges of the marketplace and the needs of people, communities, and the planet? Merchants of Vision profiles 40 business leaders who are successfully working to do just that.

James Liebig interviewed dozens of business women and men in 70 organizations from 14 countries. He found executives, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and consultants who recognize business's pervasive global influence and have found ways to use that influence to affect positive change in people's lives and meaningful growth in their businesses. In Merchants of Vision they share their beliefs, experiences, and creative actions.

Visionary yet down-to-earth, these real-life portraits provide viable business strategies for:
o enhancing social equity,
o protecting the natural environment,
o fostering human creativity,
o serving higher purposes, including spiritual, service, and community values,
o behaving ethically,
o providing transformational leadership.

Representing a variety of business enterprises in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, innovators profiled include, for example:
o Elliot Hoffman, president of Just Desserts in San Francisco;
o Jacqueline Cambata, president of Phoenix Chemical in Virginia;
o Mara Adela Palcos, director of Rio Abierto Institute in Buenos Aires;
o Marjorie Kelly, editor and publisher of Business Ethics magazine;
o Eckart J. Wintzen, president of BSO/ORIGIN, computer custom software services in The Netherlands;
o Joe Jaworski, head, Business Environment Section, Shell International Petroleum Co. Ltd., in London, England;
o Jagdish Parikh, managing director, Lemuir Group of Companies in Bombay, India;
o Carol Frenier, president, The Advantage Group, Inc., specialty advertising in Vermont;
o Meryem Le Saget, directeur, Institut de L'Expansion, Group Expansion, business seminars and conferences in Paris, France;
o Heini Lippuner, chairman, executive committee, Ciba-Geigy Limited, chemical manufacturing in Basel, Switzerland;
o Robert V. Adams, president of Xerox Technology Ventures in California.

These are people of action and integrity who sustain themselves with the creative friction between their idealism and their knowledge of the real world. Their experiences-addressing issues of personal responsibility and product quality, expanding markets and shrinking natural resources, technological advancement and cultural preservation-reveal ways businesses must adapt to survive, thrive, innovate, and lead.

James E. Liebig is the author of Merchants of Vision and Business Ethics: Profiles in Civic Virtue and vice chair and director of the Board of Wisconsin Community Capital, Inc. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard and an M.Div. from Yale. As a manager, personnel director, and company officer responsible for management and executive development, Liebig worked toward racial integration of workforces, promoted new hiring and education practices, and developed self-managing work teams. He left business in 1986 to consult, study, and write about exemplary business men and women.