Why Greed Is Still Incubated at Harvard Business School
When Nitin Nohria was appointed Dean of Harvard Business School in 2010, many people cheered. The first appointment of a non-white Dean seemed to signal change in an institution widely regarded as a bellwether for the business community as a whole. Commentators drew analogies with the election of Barack Obama: surely now much needed change would occur.
Some discontent with Harvard Business School has been rumbling for decades - as The Nation's Mary van Valkenburg wrote recently, decrying the HBS ethos of greed and selfishness.
The comparison with Obama was apt, not the least because the euphoria surrounded both events under-estimated just how hard real change is. Not everyone wants it, many are afraid of the risks involved and it's easy to underestimate how many stakeholders have a deep, vested interest in the status quo.
HBS Cautiously Tinkers With Curriculum
So when I read about HBS's proposed changes to the MBA curriculum, I expected them to be pretty tame - and they are. Some leadership lessons emphasizing emotional intelligence, time spent abroad and a short, sharp dose of entrepreneurship aren't, Dean Nohria conceded, going to transform Harvard students into leaders in two years. Clearly, they're designed to leaven the intensely competitive atmosphere of HBS with a different take on business. But these are baby steps that are more cautious than courageous.
That's understandable because the problem that Harvard has is Harvard. The ethos of greed and selfishness--which has wreaked havoc on the economy---is alive and well at Harvard. One student entering the school this year told me:
"I didn't work my ass off to get in here, and take out a massive loan to learn how to be a nice person! I did all that because I want the Harvard network, I want the Harvard cut and thrust, I want the killer instincts this school is famous for. I am going to be seriously pissed if we get branded the 'nice kids' class of 2013' - that is not what I signed up for."You could argue that this proves the success of Harvard's branding. This student knows - or thinks he knows - what the school stands for and that's what he's willing to pay a lot to acquire.
And as all business people know, changing your brand is tough, expensive and risky.
A Telling Silence
Harvard Business School is facing exactly the same challenge as the business community as a whole. In the aftermath of the banking collapse, there was an urgent need to ask hard questions about how our companies function, their sense of purpose and their relationship to society as a whole. Legislative reform was the most overt expression of this but underneath most serious business leaders were having to re-think the relationship between business and the communities it serves. No question was - or is - more urgent.
What's so striking now is the silence. Michael Porter has hastily and superficially revised some of this thinking. The University of Chicago economists whose thinking helped inspire this mess aren't recanting, and all Alan Greenspan has acknowledged is 'a flaw' in his thinking which, he said, otherwise was "working exceptionally well."
Confronted by the biggest challenge to western economic thinking in our lifetime, the response has been negligible.
Consumers know this. They're shrinking their ambitions and their consumption because they can tell nothing has really changed. Capitalism hasn't reinvented itself and neither has its high church, Harvard Business School.
This isn't cause for celebration. If ostensibly the finest minds in business thinking can't find the ideas or the energy to do business differently, and if ambitious MBA students just want to get the goodies they've seen others seize, then any faith in change will prove sorely disappointed.
Photo Courtesy of Flickr user Patricia Drury c.c.2.0
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