The enlightened capitalists: cautionary tales of business pioneers who tried to do well by doing good

The pioneers

The first business reformer : Robert Owen (1771-1858)

Man with a thousand partners : James Cash Penney (1875-1971)

The businessman who "cleaned up the world" : William Lever (1851-1925)

Kisses sweeter than wine : Milton Snavely Hershey (1857-1945)

Creating an enduring enterprise : James Lincoln (1883-1965)

New forms of incorporation and governance : John Spedan Lewis (1885-1963), and John Joseph Eagan (1870-1924)

Johnson & Johnson's rollercoaster ride : Robert Wood Johnson (1893-1968) and james Burke (1925-2012)

Great genes : Levi Strauss (1829-1902) and his heirs

Marks & Sparks : Michael Marks (1863-1900) and the Marks and Sieff families

The golden era

Leadership as an art : Max de Pree (1924- )

Too much of a good thing : William C. Norris (1911-2006)

Business mavericks : Ken Iverson (1925-2002); Robert Townsend (1920-1998); Herb Kelleher (1931-); Bill Gore (1912-1986) and Terri Kelly (1963-)

The patricians : Thornton Bradshaw (1917-1988), j. Irwin Miller (1909-2004), Edwin Land (1909-1991), John Whitehead (1922-2015), and Roy Vagelos (1929- )

Environmentalists, or capitalists? : Anita Perella Roddick (1942-2007) and Tom Chappell (1943-)

Lever Redux : Ben Cohen (1951- )

Capitalists of a different stripe: Yvon Chouinard (1938- ), Jack Stack (1949- ), Robert Beyster (1924-2014), and others

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow

Looking back : what we have learned

Looking forward : the prospects for enlightened corporate leadership

Conclusion: difficile est bonum esse

Endnotes.