Wells Fargo called off an employee conference scheduled to convene in Las Vegas. President Obama scolded executives, “You can’t take a trip to Las Vegas . . . on the taxpayers’ dime.” The outrage from Oscar Goldman, Hizzoner of the rose of the desert, centered on how his city is a place for serious business meetings. Well, the billboards and side panels on the buses there signal otherwise. Then again, Mr. Goldman has never been known for seeing issues clearly. The critical point is that for every canceled convention, meeting, or retreat, there is a hotel, acoustics firm, caterer, and on and on that lose contracts and payment. For every limit on executive pay, there is one less boat purchased, one more vacation postponed, and more downturn. We want to seize the high ground and sally forth with moral outrage on all these corporate activities, but businesses who do retreats and conventions provide the funds for service companies that then employ the personnel infrastructure for those meetings. Companies need heightened sensitivity on expenditures, salaries, travel, and meetings. But, micromanaging a business from afar is risky. Instituting a no-meetings edict hurts. If there is one thing we should have learned from this downturn is ripple effect. One person defaulting on a mortgage never defaults in isolation — the lender, the lawn service, the school’s tax base, and on and on feel the effects. Get a chain of foreclosures and the next thing you know we have a few trillion of government funds scheduled here and there for landing somewhere, hopefully in some place where those bucks can help.Â
Those in the field of business ethics demand an examination of stakeholders affected by a decision. The waiters, housekeeping staff, cab drivers, and support staff of Las Vegas are among that group when it comes to the decision on canceling meetings there. Count on a few more foreclosures in the already busted Las Vegas real estate market, all the result of these hard-working stiffs losing jobs axed because of one more canceled meeting. The irony could be found in learning how many defaults by the unemployed were Wells Fargo borrowers! In these tough times, perception requires restraint in choices on having meetings and in their locations, but there comes a point when that perception fear becomes self-defeating. Â
