Moon: "This is THE place in America where just telling somebody where you’re from can bring a totally predictable reaction:"

Various speakers: "'What’s the first question they ask you?' 'Are you Mormon!?' All the time – people ask that all the time'...'Oh, they definitely ask whether or not you’re Mormon. That's the first thing that people ask'...'Well they usually don't ask a question, they usually smile'...'What do you think is on their mind?' 'Well, the first thing they wonder is probably if I'm Mormon.'"

LDS Choir: "Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear..."

Moon: "...this is a place where worlds collide..."

LDS Choir: "...but with joy, wend your way..."

Moon: "...and the business world is no exception."

O'Grady: "A gentleman stopped in my office on business. Um, after a 10-minute conversation, he out of the blue just asked me if I’m married. No, I’m not married. Well, would you like to come to the, uh, singles events at our local Ward? And, no! You know, it’s so presumptuous."

Moon: "Claudia O’Grady sits across the table at a neighborhood coffee hangout and vents her frustration. She came to Salt Lake a couple of years ago to run a low-income financing operation. Back in Boston, where she was part of the predominant Catholic community, she says they conform to the norms of business etiquette."

O'Grady: "Here in Utah, those norms are non-existent. You can cross all boundaries. You can, you can ask those inappropriate questions. You can ask, 'Are you married?' You can ask what Ward you belong to. And that's a perfectly acceptable custom here."

Crawford: "I come from a background where I had lived here and I’d experienced a lot of this before. I knew what to expect."

Moon: "Scott Crawford is a former Mormon who recently returned here to be close to his son. He noticed the matter-of-fact way religion came up at job interviews: "

Crawford: "People talking about certain very-LDS things like going on a mission...and not like it was ever part of the interview process or anything else, but part of the small talk around that."

Moon: "One high-tech manager told me resumes will often list missionary service – as he put it – 'almost like a secret sign of an exclusive club.' Shanna Szelag, who heads human resources at another tech firm, has noticed too:"

Szelag: "Sometimes they'll say 'volunteer service,' and if you didn't know you might wonder if it was Peace Corps, whatever. But a lot of 'em will put down, 'Served a mission in such and such.' And I have felt, at previous employers where some of them were owned by the church, that they definitely had put that down as an indicator of 'I have been on a mission.'"

Moon: "Down the road from Salt Lake, Brigham Young University is turning out prospective business leaders. That's the Mormon hymn 'Come, Come, Ye Saints' the carillon is playing: 99 percent of the students here are LDS – Latter-Day Saints. ALL students are held to a strict honor code:"

Hill: "We ask students to abstain from tea and coffee, tobacco, harmful drugs, alcohol, be honest in their behavior, honest in their school work. Also, uh, to be sexually, morally clean – no sex outside of marriage. Pretty high standard when compared to most colleges these days."

Moon: "Ned Hill is dean of BYU’s Marriott School of Management. He says recruiters like the product the church-run school turns out:"

Hill: "I think a lot of employers come here because of that kind of student. They know they get a student who’s going to at least try to be very honest and try to live standards that are, ah, pretty high and create a pretty good employee."

Moon: "BYU’s students are encouraged to hold to their Mormon values in business, but church leaders don’t DICTATE business practices. Mormon Elder Sheldon Child has run one of Utah’s most successful furniture store chains – even while keeping it closed on Sundays. But Child says that’s a choice Mormons make for themselves. So Marriott’s Mormon executives, for example, can let hotel guests choose liquor or sexy movies:"

Child: "You may have a, a conflict there, but I think you just have to do the right thing for the right reason. How you feel about it personally as an owner of a company or an owner of a, an establishment. You have to do what you think is right."

Moon: "Strong Mormon convictions don't always mix with what’s financially expedient, as Brad Bertoch has witnessed. He heads the Wayne Brown Institute, a non-profit group promoting venture capital investment."

Bertoch: "There was a venture fund from out of state, all set to invest, getting ready to transfer the money, and the managing partner of the local fund got called on a mission. And he just up and left! And the whole deal fell apart. And the people on the West Coast were really taken aback. I mean, they were kinda like, ‘Doesn’t this guy wanna be a venture guy?’"

Moon: "As Scott Crawford sees it, Mormon culture and business here are inextricably entwined. Crawford heads business development for a Utah-based Internet service provider. He’s an ex-Mormon who recently moved back:"

Crawford: "The sense I get from being here is that a lot of business deals are talked about at church, on Sunday. And maybe that’s not the place for it, but people do talk shop."

Moon: "Ted Wilson, a former Salt Lake mayor who’s Mormon, says that shouldn’t surprise anybody:"

Wilson: "People don’t segment their lives. I mean, you can do business on Sunday at church. Just don’t do it while the preacher’s up there, ya know."

Moon: "Wilson now heads the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics."

Wilson: "Ah, we have a good old boy network in this town. They get together, they know who’s active in the church and who isn’t, and that does create inside contacts. The idea that you can separate church and state on the cultural, business, political level is, is really not a real concept."

Moon: "And the state’s Mormon governor isn’t about to apologize for a culture that, after all, makes Utah...Utah. Republican Mike Leavitt sees the family-focused culture here as a business draw, not a drawback:"

Leavitt: "One of the characteristics of the Mormon culture is wanting to welcome people, wanting to be friendly. It’s a very friendly, warm group of people who care deeply about others. And, uh, I think that there are more advantages as an economic factor than there are disadvantages in the long term."

Moon: "Being a part of such a close-knit culture isn’t entirely without its downsides. Mormons can be unquestioning of other Mormons, to a financial fault – sometimes DEfault. Ned Hill often warns fellow Mormons at seminars about swindles that have plagued the community:"

Hill: "We assume that when we meet somebody who’s Mormon that they’re gonna be honest with us, they’re going to be trustworthy. If they tell us they’ve got a good investment, oh, it must be a good investment. Sometimes that trust goes a little bit too far."

Moon: "Many such schemes have been promoted within Mormon congregations, sometimes with false claims of connections to the Mormon hierarchy.

If nothing else, you could see it as a manifestation of something everybody agrees is very much a part of this Mormon marketplace: A high regard for American capitalism and opportunity, in a state where the motto is a single word - "Industry" - and the official emblem is a beehive.

In Salt Lake City, I’m Bob Moon for Marketplace."