When 250 News Corp. executives gather this weekend for a management retreat at a posh California seaside resort, they'll skip the typical team-building exercises that such confabs are known for. Why role-play when you can pick the brains of actual world leaders and rock stars?
Speakers at the Pebble Beach event will include such political powers as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President Clinton and Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres. Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton will opine on remaking complex organizations, former Vice President Al Gore will riff on climate change, and U2's Bono will deliver a keynote address titled "The Power of One."
The singer is likely to focus on his poverty- and AIDS-related crusade, called One. But Bono could just as easily be referring to his host, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp.
If there's one man with the power to summon the powerful, mogul watchers agree, it's Murdoch.
"It's his unique persona and his global reach that puts him in a special category," said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management. "He is the fulfillment, although not ideologically, of what Ted Turner aspired to be, in terms of having influence not only culturally but socially. Unlike [Viacom Inc. Chairman] Sumner Redstone, Murdoch is interested in influence as much as affluence."
Call it the Rupert effect. The 75-year-old media maverick personally invited many of the luminaries who will make the five-day retreat an unusually high-powered blend of politics and business. Not only did they say yes, but at least one -- Clinton -- waived his usual $100,000 speaking fee.
A five-page agenda obtained by The Times reveals what management experts and company insiders say is a testament to Murdoch's unusual global vision and a product of his ownership of newspapers in Australia, New York and Britain, broadcast properties and cable channels such as Fox News and satellite TV services that reach every corner of the world.
"Murdoch has created a global media market by successfully operating in very different regulatory and political environments," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The retreat's lineup of speakers, she said, "may tell you how he has learned about the broad base of business environments he operates in."
