The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite by Duff McDonald

The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite Reviews

• 
  Siv30

  הספר מתאר את היסטוריית הצמיחה המטאורית של בית הספר לעסקים בהאוורד ושל התוכנית למינהל עסקים מהעשור הראשון של המאה ה 20 ועד היום. הוא מתאר התפתחויות מרכזיות ביחסי העבודה ובתפיסות ניהול שונות והוא גם מציג לקורא את גורלם של חלק מבוגריו הבולטים בית הספר שעד היום נחשב למוביל וליוקרתי בתחומו.
  
  אז מה המסקנות מהספר עד כה?
  בית הספר לעסקים של הווארד דואג לבית הספר לעסקים של הווארד. הוא הפך למפעל משגשג המגלגל מליונים בזכות התוכנית והמגזין שהוא מוציא. הוא לא דואג לגדל מנהלים שיתרמו לקהילה, או לארגון שבו הם מועסקים, או ללקוחות של אותו ארגון או לעובדים של הארגון.
  
  הדאגה המרכזית של מנהלי בית הספר לדורותיו היא להכניס דולרים בין אם עי כך שהם מוציאים בוגרים שישתחלו לאליטות הכלכליות והחברתיות, יתעשרו ובתורם יתרמו לבית הספר הון. בין אם בעסקים עם חברות וארגונים שתרמו להם בכדי לקדם את האינטרסים של התורמים ובין אם בנקיטת שיטות לא אתיות ומפוקפקות, לפחות כך זה מצטייר מהפרק ההזוי על לידתו וצמיחתו של המגזין שהם מוציאים. לפי התיאורים בספר זו מערכת משומנת ביותר שגם מצליחה לטשטש את מטרותיה. באופן מפתיע האסטרטגיה הזו לא עברה שינוי והמנהלים של בית הספר דבקו בה. אולי כי היא מצליחה.
  
  האליטיזם האקדמאי שבית הספר מתהדר בו הוא למעשה דוגמטיזם ושמרנות שמתבוססים בעצמם ולא הוכיחו את עצמם. הסופר נותן במהלך הספר עשרות דוגמאות לכשלונות של התוכנית להוציא מנהלים דינמיים בעלי מחשבה יצירתית שמצליחה להדביק את החדשנות הניהולית. ככלל הדוגמאות מלמדות שהתוכנית בכלל לא מוציאה מנהלים כי הם לא לומדים ניהול אלא איך למקסם את הרווחים האישיים שלהם ולמקסם את ההכנסות של בית הספר. שוב אולי כי השיטה מצליחה אף אחד לא שוקל לשנות אותה. הסופר מדגים עשות מקרים של כשלונות קולוסאליים בתחום הניהול רובם מוכרים מהעיתונות הכלכלית.
  
  היוהרה שמצטיירת מכל דוגמא וכל פרק בספר פשוט מחליאים.
  
  הגיחוך והיוהרה של התוכנית שעיקרה טמון ברעיון שניהול ניתן ללמוד באופן תאורטי וליישם בלי להתלכלך בעבודה תעשייתית, מגיעים לשיא בפרק "מנהלים את הדעיכה" שבו הסופר מתאר כיצד התעשיה האמריקאית הגיעה למצב שבשנות ה 70 וה 80 היא לא תחרותית אפילו מול מדינות קפיטליסטיות כמו יפן וגרמניה.
  
  הציטוט הבא של ג'יימס סטאמפס שהשתתף בכנס מנהלים של הווארד בשנת 1988 יבהיר לחלוטין עד כמה החבורה הזו, שנציגה היו בכל הנהלה של המפעלים המתועשים ברחבי ארה"ב פשוט גאוותנים, עיוורים, יהירים ובעיקר מגוחכים:
  
  By the end of the first day, I was wondering what kind of a weird world the Harvard MBA was being raised in,” he wrote. “The professors made no bones of the fact that they regarded the factory floor as the least important part of a business. The business office was the place where the company made or lost money. One of them stated that he could save more money with a calculator in a week than a factory manager could in a year with all his new machines and production ideas. Of course, at that time, the Harvard MBA was everybody’s fair-haired boy and the school’s curriculum was widely imitated. With this kind of nonsense passing for a business education, is it any wonder that American business has gotten completely off the track and become hopelessly uncompetitive?
  
  האפליה נגד נשים היא עוד מסמר בארון התוכנית המפוארת. התוכנית לא נכנעה למגמות של שוויון ומתן הזדמנויות אקדמאיות לנשים עד שנות ה 60 גם כאשר בתי ספר אחרים פתחו את שעריהם לנשים החל מתחילת המאה ה20. העובדות לא בילבלו את ראשי התוכנית שהמשיכו להתבצר בטיעונים מגוחכים ועלובים ששלחו את הנשים למטבח. עולב ופאטתיות. גם האישה היחידה שזכתה להתקבל לתוכנית ולעבוד במחקר בבית הספר, לא נזכרת בדפי ההיטוריה של בית הספר ולא זכתה לקידום לפרופסור עד שפרשה אז כאקט סימלי קיבלה את הפרופסורה.
  
  ובכל זאת מדוע התוכנית הזו נחשבת ליוקרתית, אלפים צובאים על דלתותיה מדי שנה בניסיון להתקבל לשורותיה? אין לי תשובה מלבד העובדה שבוגרי התוכנית מתברגים למשרות יוקרתיות ומקבלים שכר התחלתי גבוהה משמעותית מעמיתיהם שלמדו בבתי ספר אחרים. כמו כן, הסופר מציע את רשת התמיכה של בית הספר ובוגריו.
  
  הבעיה של הספר בעיקרה שהוא ארוך מאוד כ 600 עמודים לא כולל נספחים וחלקו מתעסק בנוקדנות וחשבונאות קטנה שמגמדת את הטענות שלו כמו הטענות כנגד מקנזי וכנגד גולדמן זאקס.
  
  בנוסף, מן הסתם בגלל אורך הספר ישנן חזרות מסויימות הן על עקרונות והן על מסקנות של המחבר. כמובן שישנה חזרה גם על הביקורת שלו כנגד התוכנית ובוגריה. לפעמים נראה שחלק מהמקרים פשוט מובילים שוב ושוב לאותן המסקנות.
  
  הספר ברובו מעניין, אבל כמו שסביר שיקרה, ישנם חלקים משמימים בספר.
• 
  Juliana Philippa

  Heard about the book from article:
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/bu...

  The book is filled with anecdotal evidence of Mr. McDonald’s argument. In once instance, he draws from a paper Mr. Jensen co-wrote in which the professor recounted a well-known story about the playwright George Bernard Shaw. As the story goes, Shaw had asked “an actress if she would sleep with him for a million dollars,” Mr. McDonald writes. “When she agreed, he changed his offer to $10, to which she responded with outrage, asking him what kind of woman he thought she was. His reply: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.’”
  
  To Mr. McDonald, Harvard teaches its students that “we’re all whores.”

  Very interested to read this, especially since I'm a b-school student (not HBS) and a Harvard grad student (at the Kennedy School).
• 
  Erica

  Unreadable. Didn't finish. Not worth my time.
• 
  Marks54

  (I rated this a "3" but feel it more a "2.5". I enjoyed it enough to finish it but have issues. McDonald is a journalist who wrote a nice book on McKinsey. I had hoped he would do the same with HBS but that was not to be.)
  
  McDonald has written a long history of the Harvard Business School (HBS) that can be summed up easily. While HBS invented the MBA degree and has been a major institution in business since its inception, notable for its case method, its high powered professors, and its arrogant but highly successful graduates, when its record is looked at in more detail, it is found wanting in virtually every respect. The school ruthlessly defends its status and legitimacy against all comers, changing only when it needs to and claiming virtually all new ideas as its own. The professors, while occasionally showing flashes of brilliance, are generalists detached from the business world and from the rest of business academia. The students embrace the stereotype of the greedy and ambitious "master of brutal action" and place their fame, fortune, and career ahead of the firms they work for or the society in which they live. Far from advancing knowledge and business practice, HBS is a "madrassa" of capitalism turning out indoctrinated shock troops of capitalism to answer the call of whichever employer can pay them the most.
  
  Get the idea? ...but tell us what you really think!
  
  My issues with this are numerous.
  
  1) None of the criticisms in the book are new. Most are longstanding. It would have been nice if McDonald had advanced some new criticisms, but if he did, I missed them. Indeed, an issue with the "craft" if this book is that it is in many parts just a retelling of the tales of others, with the grand narrative being well known.
  
  2) All of the major business schools (the 25-30 that claim to be "top ten") all suffer from varieties of the criticisms leveled at HBS by McDonald. Top business schools are as much instruments of selection, legitimation, and credentiallling as they are institutions of education. This means that one can in principle separate the benefits that come from attending the school from those that come from what students actually study and learn while at the school. For the top schools, the signaling and credentially value far exceeds the value from course content.
  
  3) When you look at institutions that pursue such legitimizing missions, it is a simple task to look at the lofty purposes of the institution and then compare that mission with the realities of how the institution actually works and the tasks that are performed there. None will survive such a scrutiny without a wide range of shortcomings being identified. In this sense, McDonald is engaging in a cheap parlor games that means little. If HBS is so terrible and fails to "deliver the goods" then why is it impossible to get into? Why do corporations send their managers to exec ed? Why do donors continue to donate? Why do readers of their materials continues to patronize them? This is not to say that the issues raised by McDonald are not worth considering. But it is not at all clear to me what is so valuable about McDonald's collection of shortcomings that everyone else dealing with HBS seems to have missed. It is easy to criticize an institution like HBS. Answering the "so what" question about the criticism seems to be more difficult.
  
  4).Another issue I have with McDonald's analysis is that he relies heavily on a relatively limited set of scholars from the camp of "economic sociology". The people he relies on the most are distinguished enough as scholars but they are of a very particular taste in that their research agendas comprise studies that look at the social institutions of business and find that these institutions can also be seen as pursuing power and influence along with their stated official goals. This is a line of work that has frequently criticized the business establishment as being more of an entrenched elite than a meritocracy and has disparaged many presences to business institutions pursuing more public goals. While one is free to cite any source in making an argument, it should not be surprising if a journalist citing a bunch critical sociologists come up with a critical story - that is what his sources.
  
  5) McDonald in spots seems to be stretching to make his overall case. For example, he makes several references to the social critique of education by William Deresiewicz, whose 2015 book "Excellent Sheep" criticisms the overemphasis on the pressured life of students seeking entrance to US elite colleges and the negative consequences of that pressure. The trouble is that the "Excellent Sheep" argument if focused on elite undergraduates not on MBA programs. While the elite grad schools enter into the argument by implication, it is near impossible to get into HBS straight out of undergraduate school. Why include the argument here when McDonald is supposedly focused on a specific institution? Aren't there other critiques of HBS and MBA programs available?
  
  6) There are other critical perspectives on business schools and McDonald would have done well to consider them more. He does discuss Henry Mintzberg's work towards the end of his book and this is a refreshing change from Spender and others - and I am no fan of Mintzberg.
  
  7) Any book about a top business school almost has to be critical, since the business schools themselves spend a lot of time, attention, and resources in touting themselves. Given that HBS has been around for so long, there is a higher bar than one might think in saying something new.
  
  8) There are parts of the book that were more interesting. The treatment of the early years and the intellectual foundation for the "master of business administration" label is interesting. The ordering of the story by Deans and decades generally works. The use of summary chapters for each decade is also a useful organizing tool to help the reader keep track. The material on the evolution of the Harvard Business Review was also interesting.
  
  9) There are better recent books that make similar points about HBS without as much snarkiness. One is "From Higher Aims to Hired Hands" by Rajesh Khurana.
• 
  Mbogo J

  Duff McDonald was in need of a good punching bag and he found it in Harvard Business School. Once he had set it up to the right height he punched the hell out of it. I have read these set of books before the likes of When Genius Failed, or Enron's The smartest guys in the room but this is the most stinging indictment I have ever come across. I wonder if the decision of HBS to deny him access played a part.
  Duff picked apart HBS from its founding idea to what it is today, the language was so scathing that I feel for any HBS staff or alumni reading it. He accused it of academic capture, and its case method a sham used by corporations to clean their image. He even posited that they were in the business of reinventing the obvious and calling it ground breaking. One of guys interviewed said reading books from HBS staff is equivalent to eating cardboard for dinner, it has zero nutritional value.
  The pillorying of HBS aside, one of the minority thesis of this book deserves merit. The idea first put forward by Milton Friedman that business exists to maximize shareholder value. This toxic idea has led to mercenary business that are looking after the bottom line always trawling the world for sweatshops in the name of cutting cost. HBS stands accused for allowing this notion to seep in the business community and poison capitalism. Before getting into business school a person always thinks that a business should exist to help the community around it and various stakeholders, after leaving business school they think its purpose is maximizing shareholder value. This intellectual sham needs to be called out before the runaway inequality it has spawned threatens the very edifice of the human race.
  The strength of this book lies in the extensive research Duff did, the not so good bit is that he picked HBS apart decade by decade and the story seemed similar all through that I felt stricter editorship should have reigned in on this repetition. I think in as much as Duff claimed he had no bone to pick, it seemed that he had and I would not quote this book on serious circles. This is the kind of book you talk with your left leaning friends over drinks. In my opinion Duff did a good job and the criticism was warranted.
• 
  Brad Fonseca

  This book will make you angry while it informs you. The author makes a very good argument for the ills in our capitalist society deriving from the MBAs running companies into the ground.
• 
  Kevin

  You’d think that a 25 hour audiobook about Harvard Business School would be boring, but you’d be wrong. This laid bare what went wrong with the social contract of America at it’s heart.
  
  When the MBAs from HBS and their ilk hit a rough going in the 1970s, after nearly three decades of unchallenged supremacy on the world stage, they bailed. They tried to cut their way to growth, which anyone who pays attention knows doesn’t work as a long term strategy. They financialized the corporation and the economy as a whole, sending our best and brightest not out to build the next great thing, but to make fortunes at Wall St investment banks building mathematical models predicting profit. The HBSers abandoned the age-old relationships and social contracts that work had with the people, and laid it bare on the altar of Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder value.
  
  The likes of Michael Jensen held forth at HBS for decades the share value maximization dogma which ended up having the asylum run by the inmates, who were only motivated to make short term riches. The only thing that was important was making cheddar. Lots and lots of it. Gone was the drive for innovation, customer satisfaction, quality, and fidelity to the community. Even the likes of Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built schools, libraries and hospitals for the public; the only thing being built by these new titans were their bank balances and yachts. What did we get for this suffering? Enron. Mortgage backed securities collapse in 2008. And that’s just since 2000.
  
  HBS has been trying to “professionalize” business management for over a century now, and have utterly failed. They’ve tried, somewhat half-heartedly by this telling, to also codify “ethics” into the curriculum as well, and met with the same level of success, as in none.
  
  HBS styles itself as an institution of higher learning, training future leaders using what they call the “case method” for unambiguous teaching. This is utter garbage. The “cases” are prepared with cooperation of their subjects, so if you don’t want a case, one is not prepared. A huge bias that goes unacknowledged by Harvard. Nothing negative is apparently ever written by HBS. This is a blind spot of such tremendous scope and breadth that managed to go unaddressed by the greatest minds of the 20th and 21st centuries that it boggles the mind. It has only recently (2017) that they’ve even given in to any alternative pedagogical method. God forbid some scientific hypothesis are proposed, researched, tested, and dis/proven. A shocking lack of imagination.
  
  This nearly criminal level of chicanery should be a stain not just on HBS, but Harvard University itself for decades to come. They’ve managed in the last 50 years to destroy the very fabric of the American Experiment to the point that it is feared lost.
  
  What is most shocking is that no one apparently noticed. Or really even cares.
• 
  Zach Church

  A business school history is a little specific. I work at a business school so this felt worth reading, and it was. It starts very slow. While there is some foundational value to understanding the early years of Harvard Business School and management education in general, the book doesn't really get rolling until the modern era ... 1960s or so on. From there on, it's pretty engaging and does a nice job explaining the competing approaching to business education and the theory of the firm.
  
  It's not entirely a takedown. In criticizing Harvard, it's criticizing business education in general and the author is pretty up-front about that. He makes some solid general arguments for a new approach to management education and does a nice job of explaining the failings of the case system.
  
  And it's important to cover conflicts of interest. It's good to collect some of this stuff in one place.
  
  Is there anything new here? Not really, but it's a strong and cohesive overview, albeit one with a slow start.
• 
  Sarah W.

  This is a history of American business as much as it is a history of the Harvard Business School, underscoring how intricately the two are intertwined. Going back to the late 19th century founding of the school, the author demonstrates how Harvard has educated and defended pivotal American business leaders and provided training and connections to the American government. Through its graduates, it plays an outsized role in the American (and global) economy, making its flaws disastrous to millions. I appreciated the author's argument, and, although I don't know that I fully accept some of its finer points, it is revealing to see connections between Harvard Business School, its educational methods, and business elites.
• 
  Stephen Yoder

  I enjoyed this book, but the size was something I just couldn't get over. I kept wondering if Mr McDonald (along with a cold-hearted editor) could have pared this book down a bit. The writing is quite funny in parts, which was somewhat surprising to me. I especially enjoyed the many times that Mr McDonald would quote some impenetrable prose created by someone in Harvard Business School and then paraphrase bluntly. I can't argue with the overarching themes of this book. HBS is immensely influential and its unquestioning embrace of destructive capitalism sans ethics has not helped anyone but a small sliver of society.
  
  I did receive an advance reading copy.
• 
  Mary Agnes Joens

  I'm conflicted about this. On one hand, the reach of HBS's influence is difficult to fathom and documenting the extent and the consequences of that influence is a worthy project. On the other, that worthy goal was undercut by the often snide tone of the book. The author tries to convey seriousness of how the constantly changing ideas and strategies taught at HBS (which do seem to be kind of divorced from any coherent or lasting set of values) influence the most powerful people in the world, but still somehow comes across as derisive and disdainful. Idk. Could have been better. Was also way too long for what it was.
• 
  Frances

  Interesting alternative look to challenge the general social idea that Harvard business school has constructed for itself; a business school turning out ethical managers helping make our world a better place, not just focusing on the bottom line. I enjoyed the history of how the school developed and how this idea was fostered. I found myself agreeing with the author that the school is fooling us and it's graduates are not being formed to do good really, just to take their places among the elite (some exceptions). Will the school be able to hold more true to its promise?
• 
  Bethany

  I agree with his overall premise, that the thinking that HBS promotes is responsible for many of the current financial woes and low ethics of the business world. However, this book is absolutely exhausting. The intense vitriol is nonstop for (in the audio book) 20 hours. I'm no fan of HBS but it is difficult to believe that there is not a single positive thing about it.
• 
  Jaime

  Exhaustivo y bien documentado. Un excelente repaso por la historia, con sus héroes y villanos, de la Escuela de Negocios de Harvard. Es evidente el sesgo anti - HBS y, aunque uno tiene qué coincidir (porque también es evidente la avaricia sin límites de la clase privilegiada), los últimos capítulos se ponen repetitivos y regañones. Interesante, sin duda. Éntrenle.
• 
  Dan Leo

  A thorough-going history of the school that, since 1908, has provided the world with a large percentage of its de facto leaders – not so much leaders in the realms of politics, but the leaders of the world behind the world of politics – the world of very big money.
• 
  Lynn

  Phenomenally good! A must-read for these corporation/big business-worshipping times, a time with more financial inequality--as if all the other inequalities weren't enough, sigh--than in 100 years. Cannot wait for the author's next book!
• 
  John

  "This is a rambling, colorful disquisition on the history of management theory in America in the twentieth century! I thought you said this was a history of Harvard Business School."
  
  "Duffman says a lot of things! OH, YEAH!"
• 
  Claus Mossbeck

  Deeply disappointed.
• 
  Ken Hamner

  I didn't agree with all of the criticisms, but certainly many. Well worth reading.
• 
  Brendan O'connell

  Good review of the history of business thought. Interesting context regarding how the people at Harvard influenced it too.
• 
  Dan Dawson

  Lame