… What kinds of courses do they offer? Robbing Widows and Orphans? Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Having It Both Ways? Feeding at the Public Trough?”
William Deresiewicz, New York Times
… What kinds of courses do they offer? Robbing Widows and Orphans? Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Having It Both Ways? Feeding at the Public Trough?”
William Deresiewicz, New York Times
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May 14th, 2012 at 7:41AM
i) If all it took to force a change of course were public statements of the obvious, the world would be a very different place.
ii) Deresiewicz’ piece irks me greatly. It is not necessary, or even helpful, to invoke psychopathy to make the points he wants to make.
We should be taking on these matters by talking about things like ‘material misrepresentation’; lying about the important facts of one’s business venture is easily understood, almost universally condemned and illegal.
Whether the perps. can empathize, can be successfully treated for their lack of empathy, or whether the condition of ‘psychopathy/sociopathy’ even can be shown ‘objectively’ to exist are much less important.
May 14th, 2012 at 7:56AM
and I am amused by Mr. Deresiewicz.
May 14th, 2012 at 8:01AM
further: following the Chronicle rule in the firing of Riley, the Times should be chastised for publishing a piece that condescends to business schools without bothering to look at the curriculum. Don’t hold your breath, though, waiting for academics to get all outraged at the voicing of an opinion without adequate “research”.
May 14th, 2012 at 8:11AM
Hey, an English professor who writes for The Nation doesn’t like capitalism! Hard-hitting stuff from the NYT.
May 14th, 2012 at 9:41AM
Having been turfed from Yale for lack of scholarship, Deresiewicz is trying to work his way into the salons of the rich and powerful with the usual tantrums. Please don’t get in the way of politifessor clambering up the social ladder or chasing after bucks dispensed by foundations established by the biz types he excoriates.
May 14th, 2012 at 9:49AM
So what is the percentage of psychopaths, according to the same measurement criteria, to be found among politicians and senior government officials?
To the extent there is any intellectual coherence in the linked article at all, he seems to be saying that corporations, as artificial persons, are *inherently* wicked or at least amoral. Why would’t the same be true of governments and their agencies, which have a very similar form of artificial personhood?
I responded to a similar unhinged attack on businesspeople as a class, by WashPost writer Richard Cohen here.
May 14th, 2012 at 10:02AM
UD, I assumed you called attention to this piece to show us how out of touch the professor and the NYTimes are, right?
May 14th, 2012 at 10:06AM
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jul2009/bs20090713_635092.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-warner/blame-the-business-school_b_138015.html
May 14th, 2012 at 10:27AM
I do believe that “analytical dogmatism,” as the BW article calls it, has contributed to the current problems; this is a different and more sophisticated critique than is the Deresiewicz rant. Excessive reliance on theoretical models can be damaging even when the models are not being employed by profit-seeking businesspeople but by truly selfless public servants (assuming for the moment the existence of such creatures) motivated entirely by altruism.
Abstract analytics are required in complex organizations and economies, but they can easily lead to kidding oneself and others. As I’ve observed before: large blocks of bad loans were made by PhDs with IQs of 140, in cooperation with MBAs with IQs of 130, which would not have been approved on an individual basis by old-line loan officers with IQs of 110.