peter foster …

The school of anti-business.

The great economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out how perplexing it was that business not merely paid for the education of its enemies but in turn allowed itself to be educated by them.

Another great economist, Milton Friedman, pointed out the dangers of taking fine-sounding but ultimately “subversive” pseudo-academic concepts, such as “corporate social responsibility” on board. And sure enough, CSR commitments are now being used as weapons against the companies who make them, as a report from Financial Post’s Drew Hasselback in today’s Post makes clear.

Schumpeter and Friedman came to to mind recently when reading a piece by Julia Christensen Hughes, the dean of the University of Guelph’s College of Business and Economics. It confirms that business schools are becoming seminaries in the church of Global Salvationism, whose fundamental tenet is that capitalism is a race to the bottom.

If I were a young person seeking an education in business, or a parent paying for such an education, I would be inclined to seek out a school that concentrated not just on topics such as marketing, accounting, entrepreneurship and management, but that promoted and celebrated the centrality of profitable enterprise in making the world an infinitely better place over the past two hundred years. But apparently profitable enterprise appears in the Guelph curriculum merely as a constraint on the real priorities of corporate social responsibility, sustainable development and the triple-bottom line.

Christensen Hughes begins her article by congratulating herself on having addressed the UN General Assembly to mark the 15th anniversary of the so-called Global Compact. This huge and unwieldy wish list of do-good initiatives was unloaded by Secretary General Kofi Annan, the man who presided over the genocide in Rwanda, the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, and the failure of the UN — one of the worst-managed and most corrupt organization in the world — to reform itself. Misguided by micromanager Jeffrey Sachs, the Compact’s so-called Millennium Development Goals have contributed little or nothing to poor countries’ progress in the past decade and a half.

When Annan announced the Compact (at Davos, where else?), he suggested it was designed to “give a human face to the global market.” But this implied that the market had an inhuman face, a typical piece of reflexive demonization by those who crave the power to impose their version of a loosely-defined “better world.”

Christensen-Hughes demonstrated the virus-like spread of such busybody initiatives by revealing that it had spawned something called the Principles for Responsible Management Education, PRME, which of course implies that plain old man-

Dean of Guelph business school carpet-bombs Milton Friedman, commits to making business “a force for good” — as if it were now a force for bad

agement education is somehow irresponsible.

Apparently Guelph’s vision is to “develop leaders for a sustainable world,” but if I were seeking a business education I would prefer to hear a commitment to developing successful business people. And I’d steer clear of any institution pervaded with the noxious notion that markets are inherently unsustainable, and that business people are ritually so obsessed by the bottom line that they pursue it at the expense of all other “stakeholders.”

Christensen-Hughes suggests that deception and fraud, along with actively seeking out abusive human rights environments, are a common feature of the business world. Certainly any such cases are not under-reported, but they are truly remarkable for their rarity. Meanwhile she gives no examples of such crimes and misdemeanours. She bloviates about all the do-good execs hanging out at the UN, committed to “advancing business as a force for good.” But again doesn’t that rather make it sound as if regular old business is a force for bad? Indeed, she comes up with the example of a virtuous company training its workers to be on guard for “child sex tourism,” as if unenlightened corporate employees might regard this as of no concern. Where’s the profit in humanity?

Apparently Guelph’s MBA includes such “community initiatives” as “completing tax returns for the economically disadvantaged, raising money for homeless youths and supporting microloans for female entrepreneurs in the developing world.”

As voluntary activities, these may all be creditable, but in a world of competition between business schools, and pressure towards moving degrees from two years to one, should emphasis not be on education for actual, you know, business?

Her claim that “engaging in transformational change is essential to the survival of humanity and the planet,” apart from being Al Gore-scale hysterical, ignores the fact that capitalism is constantly in the process of transformational change driven by everhigher competitive standards and the desire to enhance brand reputation. Unfortunately, that desire has led many executives into the predator-filled thickets of CSR and SD.

Christensen-Hughes ritually carpet bombs Milton Friedman’s “infamous” (her word) assertion that CSR is “pure and unadulterated socialism.” Friedman was dead right, and nothing more clearly confirms that than sustainability becoming the Trojan horse for anti-capitalism.

Significantly, she concludes that “We also need help in challenging business school rankings that place undue emphasis on graduate salaries, which plays into the ‘ greed is good’ agenda.”

Oh please. Was this ghost-written by Oliver Stone? Or maybe it was dictated by members of Guelph’s business faculty, because we always have to remember that Deans have to play with the academic cards they are dealt.

Guelph has one of the best veterinary departments in the world. Also, any economics department with Ross McKitrick in it is worth the price of admission. But the university’s business school comes very far down the rankings, and Christensen-Hughes’ apparently eager regurgitation of the notion that business driven by the Invisible Hand is fundamentally criminal and destructive explains why. At least that’s an encouraging sign that the market for business schools is working.