Word: rupe
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...helm. While his tense crew struggled to run down a damaged sail and hoist a new one in the midst of a hot race last year, Thompson looked on with barely a word, leaving his men to perform their work unbothered. That is just the kind of ship that "Rupe" Thompson, 59, runs as chairman of Textron Inc., New England's second largest firm and certainly one of the nation's most widely diversified. Once a badly ailing textile firm, Providence-based Textron has abandoned fibers completely and, in an adroitly executed corporate tack, sailed into 65 other...
Rigid Auditing. A longtime Providence banker who was brought into Textron by Founder Royal Little in 1954 as Little's heir apparent, taciturn, trim-waisted Rupe Thompson runs his far-flung company with a staff of only 83 people on one floor of a Providence office building. He allows his divisions to operate almost autonomously, much as at General Motors, a corporation that Thompson has studied minutely and admires mightily. His staff coordinates the company's affairs, channels profits where needed. "I'm all for delegating responsibility," says Thompson, "but I also ask for accountability." That takes...