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. …
Academic Education for Business: Its Development and the Contribution of Ignaz Jastrow (1856–1937): In Commemoration of the Hundredth Anniversary of Jastrow's Birth
A study of the career of Ignaz Jastrow, guiding spirit of the Berlin Handelshochschule, invites attention to the broader subject of academic education for business. There was a close relationship between the educational philosophy embodied in the founding of the Berlin school in 1906 and in that of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1908. This relationship was not accidental, and establishment of these two institutions constituted a decisive point in a long history, beginning in the eighteenth century. Over the years, the basic difficulty had been that of endeavoring to raise professional training for business above the secondary school level. In those instances during the nineteenth century where university-level training was attempted, the result was overemphasis on the general background of business. In 1900, despite the many promising experiments in European countries and America, a sound foundation for high-level business training was still lacking. Jastrow's Handelshochschule was the first institution that focused on the real world of business and at the same time was truly academic in nature. This same combination was also effected at Harvard, where the basic objectives were implemented by reformed teaching techniques and by a continuing program of research upon business subjects.
Die sociale Lage und die Bildung der Handlungsgehilfen
In den beiden letzten Jahrzehnten ist dem Arbeiterstande von Seiten der Regierung und der Volksvertretung, wie uberhaupt von allen Kreisen der Bevolkerung, die sich mit offentlichen Angelegenheiten beschaftigen, ein lebhaftes Interesse entgegengebracht worden. Eine Fulle von Gesetzen zum Schutze des Arbeiters und der Arbeiterin in der Fabrik, zur Sicherung gegen die Folgen von Unglucksfallen im Betriebe, zur Sicherung gegen die Folgen von Krankheit, hohem Alter, gegen dauernde Erwerbsunfahigkeit ergoss sich uber das deutsche Reich. Ob diese Fursorge lediglich einem endlich erwachten warmen Gefuhl fur die arbeitenden Klassen und der Erkenntniss, dass deren Lage verbesserungsbedurftig sei, entsprang, oder ob allgemein politischen Erwagungen sie ihr Dasein verdanken, mag dahingestellt bleiben. Sicher ist, dass wenn auch die Arbeiter selbst das bisher Erreichte nur als eine geringe Abschlagszahlung betrachten, ihren geschlossenen Organisationen der grosste Antheil gebuhrt an den raschen und grossen Erfolgen. Andere Berufskreise, deren wirthschaftliche Lage sich ebenfalls verschlechtert hatte, konnten, indem sie die Erfolge der Arbeiter sahen, sich des Gefuhls nicht erwehren, dass ihre Verhaltnisse keine oder doch nur geringe Beachtung fanden. Es darf daher nicht Wunder nehmen, dass diese Kreise glaubten, sich den Organisationen der Arbeiter anschliessen zu mussen, obwohl ihre Berufsinteressen weit abliegen von denen der Arbeiter.