What Business Schools Are For

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/opinion/what-business-schools-are-for.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Book Pins Corporate America’s Greed on a Lust Bred at Harvard” by Andrew Ross Sorkin (DealBook column, April 11), about questions raised by “The Golden Passport,” a new book by Duff McDonald, on the history of Harvard Business School:

The monumental problem is that business school leaders have forgotten why their institutions were founded: to advance the theory and practice of collective — not individual — wealth creation, using real-life conditions to gauge success. This remains the most visionary and worthy purpose put forth.

Another big problem is, paradoxically, organization. It is almost impossible for business schools to articulate, execute and sustain a vision. This situation dates to the 1950s, when business schools abandoned the idea of a central focus and adopted a “core” made up of several unrelated disciplines. The dominant forces are centrifugal, with a void in the center.

ELLEN S. O’CONNOR SANTA ROSA, CALIF.

The writer is the author of “Creating New Knowledge in Management: Appropriating the Field’s Lost Foundations,” a history of business schools.