Corporate Hand in Academic Glove: The New Management's Struggle for Academic Recognition-The Case of the Harvard Group in the 1920's
In 1909, John Jay Chapman, a professor at Harvard, issued a very harsh indictment of American universities: "As the boss has been the tool of businessmen in politics, so the college president has been his agent in education."(1) Thorstein Veblen made a similar accusation in his book The Higher Learning in America. Veblen warned against letting industry's values engulf the modern university, and pointed out the external manifestations of that dangerous process: opulent campus buildings, changes in the character of the board of trustees, the supplementation of teacher salaries through research foundations, and so on. Veblen did not see this as a deliberate conspiracy, but rather as a deplorable tendency to go too far, and he accused university presidents of ignoring the danger. He took particular exception to the universities' concern for public opinion, which in his eyes cheapened the autonomous scientific spirit, and represented the first fatal step towards the take-over of the universities by the business sector. As an initial measure to remedy this situation, he suggested completely abolishing the board of trustees as an institution.(2) In the second and third decades of the century, however, this was a minority view. The accelerated development of the universities paralleled and promoted the ascendancy of the Progressive movement, and was in turn fueled by it. Before Progressivism, American higher education had no link with the social system and everyday life, such as the colonial colleges had had with the colonial society that financed them. The goal of university studies in the nineteenth century could best be described as self-seeking. The colleges of the time prepared young people to devote themselves to God, and the college boards were composed primarily of clergymen. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, this situation changed. The clergy were gradually replaced by businessmen, and the symbiosis between the business and academic worlds expanded. The close relationship between these two subcultures gave rise to what George M. Marsden has called a "service station mentality,"(3) signally manifested in the development of a pragmatic vocational orientation in the universities, and the introduction into the academic sphere of the social sciences in general and management sciences in particular. This essay examines the special orientation of the discourse that developed in the management faculties, an orientation that was the result of their close relationship with the business sector they were set up to serve. The Harvard group is used as an example here because it expressly took the lead in disseminating the ideal of a service university. My contention is that the unique discourse that developed in the period when the management faculties were establishing themselves had a definitive influence on the development of the human-relations trend in industry, creating very progressive management norms. However, while this trend fostered a commitment to humanistic professional ethics in labor relations and raised management culture to a higher level, it also produced an extremely conservative corporate ideology. Although this ideology arose in the context of the Progressive movement, it represented a reaction against parts of that movement's political legacy. The Business Administration Faculty in the Service of the Nation The strong movement towards the incorporation and bureaucratization of firms had already raised weighty questions back at the beginning of the century--how was the liberal ethos to be preserved in a place where modern business organization was becoming a new kind of property, and the individual's chances of survival depended on his entering some form of association? What shape would liberal democracy take? What would happen to little entrepreneurs when they had to compete with big ones, and what would happen to the ordinary worker? Social Darwinism had begun to lose steam as a rampant laissez faire philosophy threatened to annihilate the coveted equal opportunity of the American dream. …
Are Organisation Researchers too Obsessed with the Economic Responsibility of the Firm?
The original intent of business education in America focused on the development of professional managers who would look after the interests of society. As economic and shareholder theories influenced business education, firm performance became the manager’s top – if not only – priority. The economic responsibility of the firm also appears to be dominating scholarly interest in organisations as well. However, business firms constitute part of the fabric of society and closer attention should be paid by organisation researchers to the social responsibilities of the firm. In doing so, a more balanced research approach can be achieved. In this article, we give evidence that research within the study of the organisation, specifically in the field of management, has predominately turned its attention to the economic responsibility of the firm. We close by demonstrating that other fields within organisation research also appear to be favouring the study of performance and we offer suggestions as to how scholars might better address the firm’s role in society beyond its economic responsibility.
The Protection of the Right to Education by International Law: Including a Systematic Analysis of Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. International Studies in Human Rights, 82.
[In view of the trend of demoting education from ”human right” to “human need” and the accompanying commercialisation of education, and the complex nature of the right to education under international law, entailing a freedom and a social aspect, this book seeks to affirm education as a “human right” and to describe the various state duties flowing from the right to education, by referring to the provisions on the right to education found in instruments of international law and by systematically analyzing article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights., In view of the trend of demoting education from ”human right” to “human need” and the accompanying commercialisation of education, and the complex nature of the right to education under international law, entailing a freedom and a social aspect, this book seeks to affirm education as a “human right” and to describe the various state duties flowing from the right to education, by referring to the provisions on the right to education found in instruments of international law and by systematically analyzing article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.]