Stanford University Press Blog

Understanding Management as a Calling

Examining the purpose of a corporation

 

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

This essay originally ran on the Corporate Eco Forum. Republished with permission.

 

Ask any business student (or anyone for that matter) what the purpose of the corporation is, and they will likely parrot back that it is to “make money for its shareholders.” The prevalence of this belief is coming under much needed scrutiny within business circles and among business students.  But it is not gaining enough attention within business education and that needs to change, something I hope to address in a new book, Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society ».

 

The call for change within business practice

The Business Roundtable and World Economic Forum have both issued statements redefining the purpose of the corporation as one that “serves society at large…supports communities…pays its fair share of taxes…acts as a steward of the environmental and material universe for future generations.” Black CEO Lawrence Fink sent a letter to CEOs  telling them that they have a responsibility not only to deliver profits, but also to make “a positive contribution to society.” Even former GE CEO Jack Welch called shareholder primacy “the dumbest idea in the world,” adding that “shareholder value is a result, not a strategy … Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.” This not a new idea; it is just one that has just fallen out of fashion. Peter Drucker, for example, argued in the 1950s that “the purpose of a company is to create a customer;” profits are one metric of how well the company performs this purpose but ultimately, he argued, “the business enterprise…exists for the sake of the contribution which it makes to the welfare of society as a whole.”  It is time to bring these ideas back, turning more recent aspirational statements into management practice.  And one way to do that is change the way we approach the education of the corporate leader.

The need for change in business training

Business leaders must learn about the basics of business management. But they must also consider the vast power that they may someday possess to shape and guide our society, and learn the responsibility to wield that power carefully. Tomorrow’s business leaders must start thinking critically about the role of business in society, their role as a manager in guiding those businesses and the overall system in which they will practice their craft – capitalism.

In that pursuit, they should be taught to look deep inside themselves to consider management as a calling in a similar spirit of service that we use to train doctors and lawyers —one that moves away from the simple pursuit of a career for private personal gain and towards a vocation that is based on a higher set of values about leading commerce and serving society.  It is about connecting your career with your values and purpose. As corporate attorney James Gamble writes “power needs to be constrained by conscience.”

This shift in focus is needed now more than ever, at a time when capitalism is in crisis. One symptom of that crisis is income inequality, which is growing to epidemic proportions not seen since 1929. Before the Covid crisis, 40% of Americans could not pull together $400 for an emergency; 78% lived paycheck to paycheck; 44% earned about $18,000 per year; and 42% had saved less than $10,000 for retirement. Today, we are in that emergency and a vast portion of the American public is in serious trouble. A second symptom lies in our natural environment as global greenhouse gases are at their highest ever level and show no signs of declining, resulting in climatic changes whose costs to the US economy alone could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year in lost labor productivity, declining crop yields, food shortages, early deaths, property damage, water shortages, air pollution, flooding, fires, and more. The market is threatening our way of life, both environmentally and socially, in ways that are unprecedented.

Academy of Management Conference 2021

 

 

 

To capture some of the spirit of gathering together in the AOM exhibit hall, we offer this virtual space, showcasing our new authors, award-winning books, and highlights from the last year of Business at SUP.

 

New Books and New SUP Authors

Recent Award Winners 

AOM Resources

 

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New Books and New SUP Authors

Announcing new books, published in the last year. We’re offering 30% off these and other recent SUP Business titles with discount code S21XAOM-FM through our virtual exhibit ».

For the best shipping rates on orders outside of North America use the discount code S21XAOM-FM at our international distributor, CAP.

 

 

SUP is proud to present Ecosystem Edge » authors Arnoud De Meyer and Peter J. Williamson in conversation with SUP Senior Editor Steve Catalano.

 

The Specter of Dictatorship Still Haunts Us

How judicial augmentation of presidential power makes our democracy vulnerable.

DAVID M. DRIESEN

The exterior of the U.S. Supreme Court. Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

President Trump’s attacks on the press as enemies of the people and his call to “lock-up” his political opponent in the 2016 election made me realize that Trump’s election endangered America’s democracy. I felt the need to understand more deeply the nature of our vulnerabilities to democracy loss, which led me to study democratic decline in Turkey, Hungary, and Poland and write the Spector of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power ».

While President Trump has now left office, America’s democracy remains vulnerable and under attack. A comparative constitutional perspective helps us better understand the nature of the threats we face. In particular, The Specter of Dictatorship helps us appreciate the danger lurking in the Supreme Court’s support for increased presidential power.

Historically, elected authoritarian leaders have subdued democracies, in part, by taking full control over the executive branch of government, firing neutral experts and political opponents, and peopling the executive branch with their supporters. Once they have control, they use it to undermine the rule of law, tilt the electoral playing field, and shrink the space for public debate. For example, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, uses prosecutorial authority to protect corrupt supporters and unleash unjustified investigation of political opponents. His government uses partisan gerrymandering and restrictive voting requirements for expatriate Hungarians to cling to power. All of these countries use economic pressures to do in opposition media, and Turkey has supplemented that with jailing of opposition journalists. Centralized control over the executive branch facilitates this. The Supreme Court and some scholars, however, support the unitary executive theory, which endorses complete presidential control over the executive branch, even though it provides a proven pathway to autocracy.

SUP Bids Fond Farewell to our Director of Finance and Operations

We celebrate the retirement of our own Jean Kim, who has worked for the Press for over 40 years.

 

SUP is both proud and saddened to congratulate Jean Kim, our Director of Finance and Operations, on her retirement. Jean started working for the Press in 1980 and has become a vital part of our work. She has kindly imparted some words of wisdom on her experience at SUP.

 

What is your fondest memory from working at SUP?

There are so many of fond memories. But if I had to pick one for me personally:

While wearing the additional hat of Building Manager many years ago, in the days when we didn't have a flood of emails to write and look at, I started sending a weekly email called “TGIF” to staff, adding some of my dry sense of humor, to communicate the building news more effectively and make it less boring. TGIF became the best tool I had for communicating with staff for many years. It was also a great way of practicing my English, as an ESL student. I felt very good when fellow employees had nice things to say about my weekly TGIF emails, and told me they appreciated them.

The best—or funniest!—moment, maybe, was when the Press was on campus and construction crews were demolishing our warehouse.  As a (mostly humorous) solution to staff having to endure that for long, awful days, with our building literally shaking, I offered to provide them all with ear plugs.