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In the American model capitalism is an essential engine that equally supports societal needs and private interest. There is an implied capitalist compact that defines a balance between public interest and private interest that is consistent with the success and long term survival of both personal and public needs and aspirations.

Philadelphia

The Mounting Cost Of Unfettered Capitalism

In the American model capitalism is an essential engine that equally supports societal needs and private interest. The capitalist compact defines a balance between public interest and private interest that is consistent with the success and long term survival of both personal and public needs and aspirations.

Wharton School, University Of Pennsylvania

When you pursue a Wharton MBA, you will transform yourself. You’ll gain real-world knowledge within a rigorous, collaborative, invigorating environment. You’ll learn new ways to think about problems, and then you’ll solve them. Because when you lead with inspiration and deep knowledge, you won’t just advance your own goals, you’ll advance society as well.

That’s why a Wharton MBA is more than a degree.

The philosophical foundation upon which capitalist compact thinking is based is not idealistic, but practical in the sense that businesses work best when there is balance between economic incentive and even handed, but certain restraint.

Left entirely to its own devices unfettered capitalism is inconsistent with a constitutional democracy and dangerous to personal freedoms. It’s not that capitalism starts out to do harm but the reality that unbridled anything — including government — has the capacity to damage society and essential institutions beyond business.

Stakeholder Interests

At its heart the capitalist compact defines a plurality of interested parties [ stakeholders ] in every business, big or small. To be successful over the long term the interests of each of these parties must be considered — concepts that were routinely taught to business school students for most of the 20th century.

The Wharton School, University Of Pennsylvania

Absent a clear understanding of the immensely important public interests in every business, managers tend to focus on the interests of only two stakeholders: shareholders and managers.

While a broad view of business, one that acknowledges all stakeholder interests, remains a cornerstone of most undergraduate business school curriculums today, millions of MBA trained managers seek to serve only owners and manager interests at the expense of all other parties and stakeholders.

MBA values have led to an erroneous belief that employees are only liabilities — expendable and easily replaced. Carried to the extreme, such thinking would transfer all American jobs overseas to be more efficient and competitive. But firing all the Americans workers would also end American consumption and produce massive damage to the impacted communities, societal stability and government.

Of course no one argues that outsourcing all American jobs is either desirable, or even possible. To the contrary, the management style loose in American business today assumes that every company can make its own choices without concern for the long term impact of MBA strategies on all stakeholders.

In the last quarter-century, short term thinking, the kind favored by managers seeking personal wealth whatever the consequences to the business itself, or its community of stakeholders, have done immense damage to most, but not all American businesses.

Most of that damage arises from decisions and policies that seek to serve only the two MBA favored stakeholders. Thus, the needs of largely transient shareholders — with no interest in the business and no commitment to its future success, are given first priority no matter the overall impact on the corporation or its industry. It’s not that providing a reasonable return on investment is flawed.

To the contrary, what MBA degree holders have demanded is a badly flawed compensation model that makes it more profitable for shareholders and managers to rape the business than to reinvest in its long term success.

Tuck School Of Business At Dartmouth College

Tuck’s curriculum is comprehensive and specific. The focus is on leadership. Through rigorous coursework you will acquire the knowledge you need to lead—in finance, strategy, marketing, general management, and more. You will be ready. Not just for your next great job, but for your career. For your future.

Pursuing a Tuck MBA is a wise investment in yourself and in your future.

Personal Benefit Over Fiduciary Responsibility

Today, what was once a masters degree in business administration has evolved into a distorted, irresponsible and misdirected managerial skill development and training program. As originally conceived, a masters degree in business carried forward the overview nature of business education — accounting, marketing, administration, finance, insurance, economics, distribution, management theory, statistics and industrial history.

Graduate schools that once saw themselves responsible for ascertaining that specialty degrees served the public interest lost their way. They did so once they bought into being competitive with one another by ways of promoting personal benefit over public benefit.

Doing so was a substantial shift in higher education, not just business schools, for until the late 20th century, the undergirding mission in American colleges had been to educate students for the good of the community as a whole, not for their personal or private benefit.

Deregulation Induced Instability

What’s becoming clear to millions of Americans, and billions more overseas, is that MBA thinking has made of itself an enabler of mediocrity, advocate for irresponsibility, and instrument for destruction of our society, economy and freedoms.

The MBA cult that drives American business has produced accounting firms who sell out their credibility for temporal earnings, drug makers who who milk health care with palliatives and symptom relief products, health insurors who abandon insureds in time of need, and banks that speculate with depositor and shareholder monies for big bonuses and personal wealth. There is no reason to believe that business schools intended this, only that they encouraged it.

Extension of the successful Harvard MBA model, based in part on case-study and specialization that focuses on serving the interests of owners and managers, to other colleges has proven to be fatally flawed. The reason is not scholarly, but philosophical for the Harvard model now being used at business schools worldwide works against the interests of employees, society, community, and government.

The result has enabled and encouraged public companies that are poorly, or even disastrously mismanaged, and banks that have abdicated their socially critical banking functions to enhance managerial bonuses through risk taking, speculation and/or extortion.

Stanford Graduate School Of Business

The Stanford Dynamic puts the values of the Business School in action. The Stanford MBA Program is shaped by three distinctive traits whose combination provides an unmatched educational experience.

• Learning built around you
• Unparalleled Community and Strategic Size
• School of the Future

Historical Perspective

Notions of public service, ethics, probity and enlightenment began to fade after the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963. The passing of the Camelot era in America, the divisive Viet Nam War, and hostage taking in Iran during the Carter administration were interconnected in the sense that they were evidence of a nation undergoing substantial change in attitudes, values and politics.

What followed has been the overt commercialization of American life — something that profoundly affects nearly every aspect of daily life.

Whether those earning business degrees could think for themselves, or had been exposed to entrepreneurial problem-solving, or could write a coherent declarative sentence mattered less than their mastery of job skills that would warrant higher pay or better opportunities for advancement.

The reason so many colleges and universities were caught up in what has proven a failed educational model, is that in the college business, it makes no difference if one knows of Plato’s insight, or Thoreau’s projections from Walden, or Benjamin Franklin’s immense contributions toward defining what it is to be a free citizen or responsible elector.

What we teach in today’s colleges and universities are job skills – not intellectual curiosity. Job skills are important and worthy of higher education — but not to the exclusion of learning how to solve problems in concert with others, or gaining insight into human frailties, understanding of our cultural foundations or the lessons of all that has gone before.

What we teach in our business schools is how to make money by any means lawful or otherwise. Excellence in business management is also worthy of higher education — but not to the exclusion of all other concerns, foreign or domestic.

A nation absent intellectual curiosity, culture, knowledge and insight is left only to feed upon itself.

Portions Of This Essay Previously Published.