Harvard Business School’s Role in Widening Inequality
http://www.nationofchange.org/harvard-business-school-s-role-widening-inequality-1410702642No institution is more responsible for educating the CEOs of American corporations than Harvard Business School – inculcating in them a set of ideas and principles that have resulted in a pay gap between CEOs and ordinary workers that’s gone from 20-to-1 fifty years ago to almost 300-to-1 today.
A survey, released on September 6, of 1,947 Harvard Business School alumni showed them far more hopeful about the future competitiveness of American firms than about the future of American workers.
As the authors of the survey conclude, such a divergence is unsustainable. Without a large and growing middle class, Americans won’t have the purchasing power to keep U.S. corporations profitable, and global demand won’t fill the gap. Moreover, the widening gap eventually will lead to political and social instability. As the authors put it, “any leader with a long view understands that business has a profound stake in the prosperity of the average American.”
Unfortunately, the authors neglected to include a discussion about how Harvard Business School should change what it teaches future CEOs with regard to this “profound stake.” HBS has made some changes over the years in response to earlier crises, but has not gone nearly far enough with courses that critically examine the goals of the modern corporation and the role that top executives play in achieving them.
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Someone has to keep track of stuff and accountants are good at it.
On the other hand, the world survived for countless millennia without "financial engineers" and marketing executives.
Though I'm not getting my MBA from Wharton ( 
), I go to a state school, any CEO with or without a MBA can screw things up. On the other hand, since you work in aerospace engineering the funding, at least government sources, have tightened up considerably since 2008. If the product(s) you sell are no longer viable or marketable then you'll end up with layoffs. But a good CEO/executive management should have foreseen it and started looking into bringing different products online to make up for the shortfall.
Where I work I've seen certain products not make the cut while another area is going gangbusters. But if enough smaller contracts aren't picked up by the customer then layoffs are definitely possible.
In general, it's not always bc they're a MBA person, they could just be shitty management. Or there could be other factors that you aren't taking into account.
the sense of entitlement, the greed, the exploitation of wage earners, the corruption.
This is where the sick US capitalist business culture is indoctrinated.
Until it changes in the business schools, nothing changes.
Last edited Mon Sep 15, 2014, 02:38 PM - Edit history (1)
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He must have made a LOT of money the old-fashioned way 
BIG bottom line.
So--all that We The Exploited can do is "complain about the gap." And it's "a good thing we are marginalized." This is how they justify their ill-gotten gains.
Thank you. Post #5 perfectly illustrates my point about the greed and arrogance that is crippling this country. I know something about the attitude and courses of study in business schools like Wharton that he is SOoooooo proud of.... this is where the vultures get their wings.
While mergers in the 50's and 60's were generally long-term beneficial, I can't point to a single merger since 1990 that has enduring benefit for the surviving (and I use that word very deliberately) corporation.
Take HP + Compaq, while it's impossible to know how each would have fared separately, there is a measure in HP's current stock price vs the individual stock prices when they merged. Of course Agilent was spun off from HP before Compaq came along, and Compaq had swallowed both Tandem and DEC, and there are probably myriad other transactions along the way that all need to be factored in somehow. (Ben Rosen wrote an article on Huffpo claiming that the HP Compaq merger was a success http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-rosen/the-merger-that-worked-co_b_95873.html. I disagree, strongly.)
I think it would be a fascinating MBA project to take some historical data from the last 20-30 years and see which mergers were successful and which were not.
The point is that MBAs and other statistical wonks advocated for these mergers with no regard for the job losses and other personal impacts that would ensue. Even some of the Big bosses were surprised when they were canned as a result (my heart bleeds for them :sarcasm
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Post #5 as others note is a perfect example of the entitled, damn the world attitude of many MBAs. I wish more of them would be casualties in the disasters they have created for the rest of us.
and her influence on Alan Greenspan:
Although she rejected the labels "conservative" and "libertarian",[172] Rand has had continuing influence on right-wing politics and libertarianism.[11] Jim Powell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, considers Rand one of the three most important women (along with Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson) of modern American libertarianism,[173] and David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, stated that "without Ayn Rand, the libertarian movement would not exist".[174] In his history of the libertarian movement, journalist Brian Doherty described her as "the most influential libertarian of the twentieth century to the public at large",[155] and biographer Jennifer Burns referred to her as "the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right".[175]
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In a large outdoor crowd, a man holds up a poster with the words "I am John Galt" in all capital letters
A protester at an April 2009 Tea Party rally carries a sign referring to John Galt, the hero of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged
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She faced intense opposition from William F. Buckley, Jr. and other contributors for the National Review magazine. They published numerous criticisms in the 1950s and 1960s by Whittaker Chambers, Garry Wills, and M. Stanton Evans. Nevertheless, her influence among conservatives forced Buckley and other National Review contributors to reconsider how traditional notions of virtue and Christianity could be integrated with support for capitalism.[176]
The political figures who cite Rand as an influence are usually conservatives (often members of the United States Republican Party),[177] despite Rand taking some positions that are atypical for conservatives, such as being pro-choice and an atheist.[178] A 1987 article in The New York Times referred to her as the Reagan administration's "novelist laureate".[179] Republican Congressmen and conservative pundits have acknowledged her influence on their lives and recommended her novels.[180]
The late-2000s financial crisis spurred renewed interest in her works, especially Atlas Shrugged, which some saw as foreshadowing the crisis,[181] and opinion articles compared real-world events with the plot of the novel.[182] During this time, signs mentioning Rand and her fictional hero John Galt appeared at Tea Party protests.[183] There was also increased criticism of her ideas, especially from the political left, with critics blaming the economic crisis on her support of selfishness and free markets, particularly through her influence on Alan Greenspan.[184] For example, Mother Jones remarked that "Rand's particular genius has always been her ability to turn upside down traditional hierarchies and recast the wealthy, the talented, and the powerful as the oppressed",[178] while The Nation alleged similarities between the "moral syntax of Randianism" and fascism.
(Wikipedia)
