In the up cycle.

• Position: Corporate director stock ownership - Brief Article - Editorial

WHILE WE HAVE BEEN in a bear market for stocks this year, we have been in a roaring bull market for corporate governance. Just as with any other aspect of business, governance has its ups and downs, its active and quiescent cycles. This year has seen a major upswing -- in governance punditry, principles, prescriptions, proscriptions, and prognostications. Here is one prediction I am comfortable making: We will come out of this time of travail with a much sounder system than we went into it a year ago with Enron's collapse.

Business executives, on and off the board, are problem solvers. Great businesses are built on the backs of problems solved, and we have great businesses in this country. We will solve the problems besetting the governance of Corporate America. We're going to get a little help from Congress on this, but what I see coming out of Washington is something that I think CEOs and boards can live with. The major work of reform and renewal will come from within.

Among various reforms being batted around, an idea that's not widely on the table yet but maybe should be is one that we examine in this edition: the wisdom of a "no sale" policy with regard to director stock ownership. I was seriously conflicted when I posed the question, "Should Directors Ever Sell?," to our group of commentators (pages 15-24). I believe you can be a good director without owning a share of stock -- i.e., a person of integrity, one who is informed, and one who is independent minded (the three I's as I term it), all of which we want directors to be. Nevertheless, I believe in the motivating force of having to "eat one's own cooking." I'd...