CORPORATIONS: Family Party

Most big U.S. corporations are so widely owned that stockholders and top management are complete strangers to one another. To Walter S. Mack Jr., president of Pepsi-Cola Co., this seemed a sad thing. By establishing a chummier relationship, Mack thought he might turn Pepsi-Cola's 22,000 stockholders into 22,000 active Pepsi-Cola boosters.

Last week Mack started getting chummier. In Jacksonville's George Washington Hotel, he threw a party for Southern stockholders. About 100 people showed up. (To forthcoming parties in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, nearly 14,000 stockholders have accepted invitations.) After a talk by President Mack on Pepsi's operations stockholders were treated to ham, cheese, roast beef and chicken sandwiches, coffee, Pepsi-Cola. President Mack himself, looking not unlike Movie Butler Arthur Treacher, passed around a tray of hors d'oeuvres . One happy stockholder's verdict of the party: "It kind of hit the spot."