GraceKennedy

Enterprise and Bureaucracy

Following the celebrations to mark Grace, Kennedy's Sixtieth Anniversary in February
1982, a Gleaner editorial included the comment:

Through a blend of good business practice, efficient management, promotion in
the market place and involvement with the Jamaican people, the company has
earned for itself a sound reputation. There are other companies, which rank with
Grace, Kennedy Limited and we hope the example, which they are setting in how
to be good corporate citizens, will be followed by other younger and smaller
enterprises.

Too often we tend to look at the negative aspects of private enterprise, tarring all
of them with the same brush. Yet the reality is that there are good corporate
enterprises doing a service and contributing to the development of the Jamaican
economy; as well as the shady hustlers whose sole aim seems to be to make a
million dollars in the quickest possible time, and to do so without reference to the
national good.

It is the rip-off artists who are responsible for some of the more unacceptable
practices in the private sector. And once the business community recognizes this,
action should be taken to discourage the quick buck hucksters.

Companies operating at the level of Grace, Kennedy by their example can do a lot
to foster the spirit of enterprise.

Carlton Alexander would have endorsed those comments to the full. In 1983 he would
have reached his fiftieth year of service to the Company. With the passing of Dr. Grace,
with whom he had not worked; and of James Moss-Solomon and Luis Fred Kennedy, his
mentors and patrons, Carlton Alexander was now recognized throughout Jamaica as 'Mr.
Grace, Kennedy', Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company and the
acknowledged spokesman for the private sector on matters of national importance. In
their endeavour to achieve both the profitable expansion of the Company's business and
its acceptance by the general public as a worthy institution, Alexander and his Directors
were constantly searching for a proper balance between raw enterprise and that measure
of bureaucratic administrative control which would ensure the Company's legality,
longevity and popularity, without stifling the search for business.

The ultimate private enterpriser is the pirate whose primary concern is to find the greatest
profit as quickly as possible. The pirate captain assembles his crew for each venture.
Some may wish to work with him on every occasion because of his reputation for
success. He, however, chooses his band to meet the anticipated exigencies of the
immediate project; he is not concerned with their loyalty or their welfare beyond its
conclusion. During the particular enterprise, his commands must be obeyed without
challenge but there are previously agreed arrangements for the division of the expected
spoils and for compensation of those who suffer death or injury during the action. All is
strictly planned and controlled, but is totally ad hoc. There is no continuing organization,

there is no desire to increase the capital assets of the business beyond the ownership of
equipment necessary for the particular engagement, and there is no concern to win the
'goodwill' of those with whom he will deal. Those are the marks of then ultimate
profiteer.

At the other end of the scale is the private enterpriser who, seeking profit, seeks also to
build a continuing, growing and publicly approved business. To be successful in this, he
must find loyal support from his employees in order to avoid the disruptions of rapid staff
turn-over; he must be ready, without seeming rapacious, to acquire additional assets and
business when opportunity arises; as the enterprise grows, he must depute an increasing
measure of managerial direction and responsibility to others; and he must so conduct his
operations that those with whom he deals will wish to continue to do so. In short, his lust
for profit is restrained by an unavoidable spread of executive and administrative controls
of a bureaucratic sort and an increasing sensitivity to public opinion. From their early
days, Grace, Kennedy & Co., Ltd. have always evinced these features of the private
enterprise in search of profits and also of goodwill.

Aggressiveness and quick action are important means by which an enterprise beats its
rivals in the business. Carlton Alexander had demonstrated this in 1951 after Hurricane
Charlie. In another example, when it was announced in 1983 that the Jamaica Public
Service Co., Ltd. would acquire a floating plant in Japan, Grace, Kennedy & Co.,
(Shipping) Ltd. moved quickly. They immediately advised Wijsmuller Transport B. V. in
Holland, for whom they were the local agents, of the project and that company secured
the contract to move the barge from Hiroshima to Kingston. Individual members of the
Grace, Kennedy Board of Directors from time to time in the privacy of the Boardroom
have described some other company as being 'up for grabs', or in similar 'piratical'
language which they would carefully have avoided in public address. But there were
always the restraints on action, and the most important of these were the understandings
that Grace, Kennedy held no monopoly in aggressive business practice and the constantly
emphasized policy of good corporate citizenship.

It was the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce which, in 1983, declared Grace, Kennedy &
Co., Ltd. to be the company 'which best demonstrates the Human Face of Business' and,
through Mrs. Avis Henriques, presented an award received on behalf of the Company by
its Finance Director Rafael Diaz. And in the same year, in a meeting of the Board at
which the Company's policy in a highly competitive market was the main topic of
discussion, Alexander was much concerned to protect the Company's image as 'the
people's friend'. With May 1983 marking his fiftieth year in the service of Grace,
Kennedy & Co., Ltd., the first five years of the 1980s were the zenith of Carton
Alexander's outstanding career.

From 'Shartridge' into 'Scarcity'

During the last years of the PNP regime, the shelves in the stockrooms, in the
supermarkets and in the smaller retail outlets had gone bare. Small suppliers went out of
business, housewives searched for basic food and household items.