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. …
MBA: The First Century
An invention of twentieth-century America, the MBA degree has grown from tiny beginnings to become one of the two most popular graduate degrees in the world. Although scorned at first by business as too theoretical and loathed by universities as indecently practical, it nonetheless became the fastest growing phenomenon in the history of education. This book traces the challenges the MBA has faced and the changes the degree has undergone during its amazing and colorful first century.
Dream and Thought in the Business Community, 1860-1900
The great age of American entrepreneurship produced the "robber barons," men who exercised an enormous influence on the nation's psychology. What these men thought-or thought they thought-is the subject of Mr. Kirkland's original and provocative book. Immersing himself in the statements and writings of businessmen of the era, he explores their views of the social and economic scene, their interest in higher education, and their unease with wasteful and inefficient government. In distilling their dreams and thought, Mr. Kirkland does not pass judgment on whether their actions measured up to their words. "Kirkland's book demonstrates that history can be provocative and even colorful when written with urbanity rather than partisanship...His book deserves widespread attention by historians and businessmen alike."-American Historical Review. "Brightly written and thoughtful...a stimulating integration of economic and social history."-Journal of American History.