A Talent for Doublethink

Mission statements are to businesses what constitutions are to countries: they attempt to distill and articulate an organization's highest aspirations for itself and to guide every action it pursues. How surprising and encouraging, then, when I read in the weeks before enrolling as a student that the mission of Harvard Business School is "to develop outstanding business leaders who will contribute to the well-being of society."

After having been at the business school for a little while now, I have to say that the school seems to have no genuine intention of fulfilling that mission.

Over 600 people in my M.B.A. class have just finished a two-and-a-half day "academic immersion" program that purports to varnish us with an understanding of how business interacts with government and civil society. It is called "Society and Enterprise" (S&E), and it seems designed as a ridiculous token effort to convince students that there exists a higher calling than the profit motive.

In the business school's typical Socratic method, we read and discuss cases--about giant drug companies giving away drugs to diseased African nations, companies that support AmeriCorps even while they lay off their own employees, and telephone utilities that donate computers and networks to schools. While these "socially responsible" cases provide a welcome contrast to the standard fare of mergers and acquisitions, high tech battles and clever marketing schemes, the material is treated institutionally and culturally with a care bordering on disrespect.

Institutionally, this "do-good" program is isolated from the "regular" curriculum, and it is graded pass-fail. Students therefore treat it with overt contempt. Where regular classes are characterized by active, engaging class discussion (class participation typically accounts for 50 percent of one's grade), S&E classes were characterized by long periods of blank silence. Where regular classes are characterized by unanimous participation (skipping classes in the business school is a severely punishable no-no), S&E classes saw students leave to interview at investment banks.

If the business school's mission does truly guide the educational experience it provides its students, S&E ought not to exist. Imparting a sense of social responsibility is not a two-day immersion. It is a two-year immersion. The concept of improving the "well-being of society" should be integrated into every class that the school teaches. In the same way that a broad definition of "business strategy" seems to underlie and enlighten all of our subjects--from financial reporting strategy to operational strategy to marketing strategy to financing strategy--so too should a broad definition of social responsibility be brought to bear on all cases. What else are "outstanding leaders" but people who leave things better off than they found them?

If the business school does not agree with this statement, it ought to revise its mission statement. I might suggest this: "We aspire to develop outstanding business leaders who will increase shareholder value." In my view, this is a more honest articulation of the school's mission. This is a business school; aiming to increase shareholder value is nothing to be ashamed of, even if it lacks the grandiose ambition of improving "the well-being of society."

Culturally, the business school actively discourages social leadership. Professors seem to have no compunction being prescriptive about behavior when it comes to the tenets of rabid profit-seeking. Last term, one professor stated to the class that "Our jobs in life are to increase society's wealth--we have to work on enlarging the pie. Enlarging the pie is what makes charity possible. If we didn't do this, there would be no such thing as charity!" Frantically scribbling notes, several students took as gospel this Word of the Professor--not realizing that there is perhaps a valid and opposing view.

The school obviously has values, and it obviously wishes to impart those values to its students. How odd then that it would choose values that seem antithetical, or at least benignly neutral, to its mission. How many "future leaders" will change their behavior in the years ahead as a result of what they learned in S&E? From wide discussions with classmates, the answer is a resounding "none." On the other hand, I would wager that many students will accept as unequivocal truth a trickle-down theory of charity.

The business school does several things very well. Its use of teaching technologies is cutting-edge; its physical plant is run with Disneyworld-like efficiency; its alumni outreach programs inspire a loyalty measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But if the business school wants to be a true leader and play a "CEO" role in education, it would recognize that at the heart of true leadership in education is the imperative to enlarge students' beliefs of what is possible. The business school's beliefs seem shockingly narrow: to increase profitability and win the corner office.

What surprised me most about the S&E experience was that several students wanted to learn more about social responsibility in business. They lamented the fact that the S&E program was not graded, isolated from the rest of the curriculum and so short. By failing to accomplish its lofty mission "to develop outstanding business leaders who will contribute to the well-being of society," the business school is shirking its responsibility to these students.

Harvard Business School graduates ought to form a new type of business leadership, one that embraces acting on deeply-held beliefs to contribute "to the well-being of society." Definitions of "well-being" will obviously sometimes conflict, but what is important is that we learn to find, secure and initiate opportunities for social action.

Only if the business school has the courage to live up to its promise will it be able to state its mission in good faith. Until then, the words ring hollow.

Patrick S. Chung '96 is a former editorial chair of The Crimson. He is currently a student in Harvard's J.D.-M.B.A. program.