Fifteen

Issue date: 5/12/09 Section: Opinion

Established managers are constrained by legal and competitive pressures that limit their ability to think innovatively and speak publicly about these questions. But we, both as students and as an institution, are uniquely positioned to represent management as it negotiates a new place in society. Instead we are passing on this role and leaving the debate to groups outside management; many of which believe capitalism itself is the root of the problem.

For the last generation of managers, one that worked in an environment of deregulation, the idea that our profession should be limited only by the law and individual ethics was freeing. I fear our generation will find this philosophy restrictive as the law closes in and the blunt instrument of regulation stifles innovation. To avoid this we need to reexamine the role of management and bring to society a philosophy that allows us to recognize as unethical the behavior of firms that extract profit at the expense of society. Our failure to do so, indeed our apparent lack of desire to even attempt to do so, is truly what is wrong with the MBA.

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