Re: Harvard Business School

On Aug 4, 6:13 pm, "Dr Quite" <qu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Dr. Barry Worthington" <sh...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:12fa79e8-8e7f-41e6-b218-96a60c814d2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Aug 4, 3:34 pm, "Dr Quite" <qu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Dr. Barry Worthington" <sh...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
messagenews:524da1c8-cce0-40da-9eb3-f2b70aff0116@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

But he had serious
doubts about his future in journalism, and indeed about newspapers
themselves. “I wanted control over my time, my financial resources,
and my life, and I imagined that a general competence in business
would stand me in better stead.”
And he thought he would get that at Harvard? With an MBA?

Why not? Harvard encourages self-discipline and offers the tools to
achieve
it.
In the area of business studies, it offers a rather curious view of
the world that accords with no other academic discipline.

Empty words.

In my experience, the MBA philosophy and approach assumes that there
is an accepted body of knowledge and skills that everyone studies
without question. In marketing, it is a matter of technique,
illustrated by appropriate case studies. Little attention, if any, is
paid to any cultural, social, or political context. That is not the
way to pursue business studies, for 'one size does not fit all
situations.'

The Harvard airheads, in the context of the Washington Consensus, saw
post communist economies as a tabula rasa upon which anything could be
written anew. All the doleful consequences of 'transitology' flowed
from that - 'shock transition', 'macoeconomic stabilisation', the 'J-
curve', and other garbage.

In a nutshell, it produces people with a mindset that can cause a
lot of damage...

Everybody has a "mindset" that can cause a lot of damage. Why are you
picking on HBS? Seriously...

Because I have seen what these people have done first hand in Central
and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (my doctoral thesis is
a study of economic transition in Estonia).


particularly in institutions that formulate and 'advise'
on business and economic policy. I've seen thse people in action
at international conferences, and it wasn't a pretty sight....

Your perception. What does it matter what they do at international
conferences? It seems more important to know what they do in real life.

See above.


So off he went to Harvard Business School (HBS), where a coveted MBA
represents the “union card of the global financial elite”. Harvard
MBAs run the World Bank, the American Treasury, General Electric,
Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble.
Which explains why things are...er..in a bit of a mess. One might
mention that the 'Harvard boys' trashed the post Soviet economy
in Russia,

Roffle - how did they manage to trash something that was already trashed?
I see that you know little about the 'transitology debate' and
the doings of such luminaries as Jeffrey Sachs....

I know what happened in Russia.

You don't give that impression.


I know Harvard graduates are "blamed".

And justly, in my opinion.

and commited a great deal of damage elsewhere.
Even George W Bush is an alumnus.
That's a recommendation?
To
some indefinable extent, Harvard MBAs run your life: “The hours we
work, the vacations we get, the culture we consume, the health care we
receive.” And they are supremely confident they should.
But....things are starting to unravel, aren't they? And
their influence started to wane some time ago.

Whose influence?
Harvard Business School! Who else?

The result of Delves Broughton’s time there is this funny and
revealing insider’s view, revealing precisely because he is genuinely
fascinated by the world of business, and his fascination is
infectious. Yet feelings of unease emerge even before he arrives. He
reads a student guide on What to Bring. “Don’t bring that guitar .. . .
Don’t bring any books from literature or history classes . . . Don’t
bring your cynicism.
Yup...that's a harvard MBA for you. A lobotomised degree
for lobotomised people....

Sounds like you're envious.
Don't be silly! Do you know much about MBA's? A purely American
(and to a lesser extent, British) phenomenon.

So what if they're American or British?

Don't you think that it's odd that no-one in Europe is interested in
MBA's?


So far you've laid a trail of dark
hints and innuendo. Damage done... lobotomised courses... Nobody intelligent
will be able to see what your specific gripe is. I certainly can't.

Perhaps you need to re-read my posting. I speak plainly enough....

Do bring all the diverse rest of you. We can’t
wait to share the experience.” Immediately, his bolshie British
bull***- detector thrums into life: “Who were these people? And why
did they talk like this?
Perhaps because they are/were complete prats?
.Why can’t I bring my cynicism? Or my books?
Aren’t they a part of the ‘diverse rest of me’?” “Your calendar will
be jam-packed with amazing, fun things to do,” warbles the guide.

Amazingly, despite this terrible threat, he persists. Instantly, he is
swamped with work: company case studies, spread*** analysis, books
called things such as Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado,
intended to make him feel he’s doing something terribly daring and
manly. He is surprised at the large presence of earnest Mormons and
unimaginative former-military men in this cauldron of capitalism.
Well, in a course that believes business studies is a fixed body
of knowledge and skills, without any kind of social, political, or
cultural context, handed down like tablets of stone to
Moses........well, those are the kind of people it attracts.

But that's not what Harvard is,
That's what an MBA is!

"That", as in the description given above, is a series of empty words. "A
fixed body of knowledge and skills, without any kind of social, political or
cultural context". Meaningless.

No it isn't. It's a valid assertion.

so how do you explain "the kind of people it
attracts"?
I think that he explains that in his description of his fellow
students......if you care to read it, together with my comment.
But
gradually this begins to make sense, for HBS is pervaded with an
oppressive atmosphere of unquestioning obedience and creepy
religiosity. There is the confessional My Reflected Best-Self
exercise, to encourage students “to create a developmental agenda for
leveraging their reflected best-self” and “work maximally from
positions of strength”. Approved results sound like this: “I do not
take on the negative energy of the insecure . . . I stay centred . . ..
I try to model the message of integrity, growth and transformation.”
Delves Broughton is quietly incredulous that people actually talk
about themselves like this, in public, straight-faced.
Indeed.

The weirdest and creepiest episode is when a student writes to the
entire school, confessing to a “regrettable property- damage
incident”, a gorgeous euphemism for urinating against a neighbouring
student’s door. “His behaviour had made him realise he still had work
to do figuring out exactly who he was.” Ye-es . . . or maybe he should
just resolve not to pee against people’s doors in future. Even more
creepily, Delves Broughton finds that he no longer responds to such
tosh with a healthy snort of laughter. “It was serious, right?
Leadership. Core values. Transformation. Being true to oneself.” It
takes his wife — his American wife — to inject some common sense.
“These people are freaks.”
It took his wife to tell him that?

She sounds a bit stupid, doesn't she?
On the contrary, she is quite perceptive.

Mheh. It's childish abuse, calling people freaks.

Well, I think that some of them are. They share the same kind of
ideological obsession that one finds in certain variety of
Trotskyites. In fact, you find that that is what some of them were.

The total bill for his time at HBS is $175,000. Was it worth it?

A rhetorical question, one assumes.

For

all its vast reputation, power and pomposity, you feel that HBS
neither understands the complexity nor acknowledges the chaotic
unpredictability of the world economy any better than anyone else.
That is self evident....

What's self-evident? This "feeling" the journalist has? Not to me.
It is to many people, like myself, who criticise the MBA philosophy
and approach.

But your criticisms are so far weightless.

Well, I take the trouble to explain myself.....if you don't read the
comments, that isn't my problem.....

Dr. Barry Worthington

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