There was a fascinating, though brief, interview with Sir Terry Leahy, the recently retired CEO of Tescos, on the Today programme this morning, which you can hear here.
He talks about his poor background in Liverpool, his Irish immigrant parents, and attributes his success in business in part to his Catholic junior school, which got him into the grammar school, and instructed him in moral absolutes.
'The most damaging tendency of all is our sleepwalking into the quagmire of moral relativism, an obsession with tolerance, a wish to please everyone.'
He makes clear the importance of moral absolutes in the world of business: whatever fun academics may have in denying such concepts, in the world beyond academe, they are essential for any human commerce.
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3 comments:
Was this the same CEO who permitted "after morning pills " to be distributed in Tescos ?
Thanks for reminding me, Father.
I should make it clear that it was not my intention to beatify Sir Terry (great though my influence undoubtedly is) merely to draw attention to an interview I found interesting, and the reasons I found it so.
You are right to point out that Tesco, under his leadership, undoubtedly did some things which were objectively wrong, despite this profession of moral absolutes.
In charity I would like to believe that does not mean that he is being hypocritical here (and I realise of course that you neither say nor imply that), but others may infer it....), but that his moral foundation was incomplete or not retained in more than outline - it was only a Catholic Primary School which he attended, as I understand it.
"Catholic in public life" begins to look more and more like an oxymoron....
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