In a recent New York Times opinion essay, a professor who has taught at Harvard, Cornell, and Cambridge business schools concludes that . Business schools, the author Christopher Marquis argues, train students to optimize financial metrics, while workers and communities are ignored. As a result, business programs turn idealistic students who aspire to fix health care or commercialize clean energy into consultants and finance professionals. His verdict: “We don’t need to ‘fix’ business schools. We need to abolish them.”
His essay reflects a mindset that treats profit as evil, corporations as harmful to society, and managers as morally compromised. We are all professors in business-related fields, and we do not deny the importance of teaching future managers about ethics; we each have devoted a considerable portion of our careers to studying , , and the institutional context of markets. We recognize that the normative aspects of capitalism are subtle and complex, and that there are conflicting views of the social and moral responsibility of managers and firms. Critics such as Marquis have a strong, particular view of what managers should do — call it “progressive.” And shutting down the institutions devoted to analyzing and debating these issues leaves students unable to grapple with, and challenge, this progressive mindset.
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