OIL: Exxon: Testing the International Tiger

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to be his personal assistant for a year or so, then sends him back home to a top job. In 1972-73 his executive assistant was Masamoto Yashiro, now vice president of an Exxon subsidiary in Japan. As a staff for the world government, Exxon has created what amounts to a global civil service that concentrates on identifying potential managers early and promoting them fast. The company recruits promising geologists, engineers and business-school graduates from colleges in the U.S. and abroad. From their first day on the job, they are constantly watched and rated by their immediate bosses and, if they do well, moved-into a new job, or perhaps even a new country -roughly every three years. The company insists on giving its future leaders rounded experience. It regularly sends accountants to help run refineries, switches lawyers into marketing.

Each year, chiefs of every Exxon division, subsidiary and affiliate have to compile lists of their executive jobs and identify people who have the potential to fill them in the future. (Exxon defines an executive as anyone earning $25,000 a year or more; some 2,900 of its 150,000 employees around the world fit that category.) Similar lists are kept all the way up to the top of the empire. In New York, each Exxon director compiles a brief list of executives who are potential future members of the board.

Rising Exxonians are never quite sure where they rank on any list; superiors discuss with them only their performance, not their potential. That system reaches one rung short of the top. Clifton Garvin Jr. insists that when directors named him Exxon's president in July 1972, he was surprised. Though Garvin was one of two executive vice presidents, no one had ever told him that he was at the top of Jamieson's list of possible future presidents.

Long Reign. Garvin can expect to become chairman when Jamieson reaches mandatory retirement at 65 in August 1975. Since Garvin will be only 53 then, he will presumably preside for a dozen years, about twice as long as usual. Garvin, a Virginia Polytechnic Institute engineer and a graduate of the Baton Rouge, La., refinery, which is a prolific breeding ground of Exxon leaders, once ran Exxon's chemical operations. He confesses to "a feeling of frustration" in trying to explain the complexities of the energy problem.

By the time they reach the top, Exxon men have had any crudities refined by long exposure to varied jobs, people, countries and governments. Author and Oil Consultant Ruth Sheldon Knowles, who has traveled widely around the Ex xon empire, says that most of the Exxonians working overseas seem to be better informed about foreign politics and society than the U.S. diplomats stationed in their countries.

Their bosses caution Exxon men to treat all governments alike: maintain friendly and correct relations, but never get too close or become too hostile.

Since Exxon intends to stay in a country long after both the present government and its successor are gone, it must get along with any kind of regime, from right-wing dictatorship to left-wing populist to outright Communist (witness its Polish contract). Jamieson keeps on his office coffee table a handsome cigarette box presented to him by the late President Sukarno of Indonesia, a vehement foe of both the U.S. and capitalism. Jamieson notes that he has negotiated directly with the Shah of Iran,