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Rogers
Lexington, KY - The topic: corporate responsibility. The speakers: two men described by the host as “Titans” or “rock stars” of industry. The setting: a gathering of students from the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics.
James Rogers, chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy, grew up in Kentucky. In 2009, Newsweek magazine named him one of the 50 most powerful people in the world.
Duke Energy is one of the largest power companies in the U.S., supplying electricity to customers in the Carolinas and the Midwest. The company also distributes natural gas in Ohio and Kentucky.
Joe Craft is president, CEO and director of Alliance Resource Partners, a major coal producer with ten underground mining complexes in five states. He is originally from Hazard and exports 32 million tons of coal, much of it from Kentucky, around the world.
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Craft
The men earned degrees from both the UK Gatton College of Business and Economics and the UK College of Law. The pair was invited to discuss corporate responsibility and how this ideal is compatible with their corporate visions and missions.
Harvie Wilkinson, UK Gatton MBA Program Director and Director of the Executive Education Center, told the crowd about a recent survey cited in The Wall Street Journal saying 79 percent of young Americans believe there are no absolute standards in ethics.
Wilkinson also said most business students are not taught ethics and that many don’t recognize ethical dilemmas when presented or don’t know what to do about them.
Dave Adkisson, president of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and the event moderator, noted recent financial headlines – the recession, financial collapse, unemployment, corporate leadership issues, scrutiny of Wall St., Occupy Wall St., federal oversight of the financial industry, CEO salaries and more.
Adkisson told the audience “People like you and me are desperate for corporations to succeed in our country to produce earnings for those of us with retirement funds or savings accounts. We are desperate for them to create jobs and get us back to some sense of normalcy.”
Craft said one of the cultural statements that permeates his company is ‘It’s who you’re with.’ “It’s no different from what you (students) did to get into this MBA program. You made great choices and decisions by associating with folks who could help you stay on the right path. Credibility, trust, integrity, character and reputation are keys to any culture.”
With former UK basketball star Anthony Davis in the audience, Craft, a huge UK athletics supporter, made a sports analogy. “Our success is based on each individual; one man to the other and everything Coach Cal says about being your brother’s keeper, like ‘We got your back.’”
Rogers believes in developing leaders and said they are “the hardest to find.” Speaking of values, Rogers said “if you’re a nuclear operator, safety comes first. If you’re supplying electricity to homes and businesses, safety comes first,” he said. “It is having your employees go home healthy and in the same shape they were when they came to work that morning.
Rogers believers in a culture of leaders. “You must bring people together focused on the mission and recognize in large companies it is the creation of leaders that gets results, not the creation of followers.”
On the subject of corporate giving, Craft said Alliance Resource Partners relates to the communities in which it does business by matching money for community projects. Since it is usually among the largest employers in an area, “if (communities) give time or money to a project, we will match that with dollars,” he said. However, Alliance cannot be involved in effectively “financing the community,” he added.
Duke Energy set up a foundation and provides money for it. The presidents of the company’s various operations or their representatives lead the foundation council and decide how to allocate funding. He also noted that keeping the company strong provides value to shareholders, suppliers, employees, customers and the communities they serve.
Each CEO also took the opportunity to defend his industry, presumably against claims of harm to the environment. “If you look at the history of coal in this country and our economic vitality going back a hundred years, it was built on the back of coal,” said Craft.
“I think coal is critical to the history of our country. It will be a key player in the future and will be cleaner than today,” said Rogers. “There are 1.3 billion people in the world today with no access to prosperity because they have no electricity. That is one challenge we have in the world,” he concluded.
Craft said that if you examine the progress made in environmental technology solutions, “coal has met the challenge by growing its production while at the same time reducing emissions with substantial investments.”
Craft said manufacturing jobs in Kentucky are here because of low-cost power. “We’ll have to rely on coal if we’re going to have growth in the economy. We can find solutions, but they’ll not be overnight solutions,” he concluded.