Text item: Re: Pro-business Philosophy
 
  Thank you Daphne, Robert, Ginny (yes, you are coming in well) and Marsha
   for the comments, which I have found useful.  I have to say that I am
   flattered to have this debate named after me. Anticipating, therefore,
   that some others are anxious to join in, I would like to narrow it
   slightly.
 
I do not really now want a full debate of moral, social or political
   philosophies.  I am just asking whether we in the applied discipline of
   business at some point should sign on to a (generally) pro-business
   approach in our teaching and research.  I would not think the schools of
   general studies, social science, humanities and other liberal arts need
   confront the same question.  But students coming to business school (I
   presume) expect to learn about how to be good business people, not how
   to be good, "empowered" employees (although admittedly there may be
   common ground there).  This is not, with respect, employee empowerment
   school.  It is business school.  A medical school student does not
   expect to learn how to sue physicians or to sicken patients.  A
   physicial education school does not focus on the evils of exercise.
 
I sense that many people would rather advocate the side of the employee,
   than the business enterprise itself.  Yes, employees have it tough, but
   what about all those entrepreneurs who risk it all and lose it too?  We
   rarely hear about the "rights" of business.  It is no cakewalk for small
   (maybe even larger?) business today either.  Aside from the descriptive
   law (which presumably everyone teaches), the critical approach virtually
   always seems to be in favour of sockin' it more to business.  More of us
   have been employees than we have been business persons.  Many like me,
   have been both.  If one thinks that landlords are odious, buy a revenue
   property and have one's point of view about tenants (and landlords)
   changed in a jiffy.  There is a post-industrial revolution sense that
   all business is wealthy and powerful (often insentient) and all
   employees as a class are abused and downtrodden.  I question whether
   that premise is accurate today.
 
To the extent that we are in that respect choosing sides, I think we are
   being political and I simply query the choice in the business school
   context.  An example: I understand there is room for judicial
   interpretation about what can fall within the rubric of "disability".
   Now weight and height (why not looks, innate musculature, eye color,
   nose size?, etc.) are being proposed.  [My own view is that this
   nonsense (respectfully) will never will end - there will always be
   something else, so that an employer can ultimately make no decision at
   all that is immune from attack].  All the papers I saw crafted
   anti-business (or pro-employee) analyses.  People "drooled" over the
   invariably outrageous facts of cases and, essentially, "applauded" the
   legal downfall of management in each case.  It felt like being in a
   union office.  No one takes the pro-business perspective to show, for
   example, how practically unworkable it is, how it would cause more
   fractious litigation, how it is conceptually and historically flawed,
   etc.  There were no resources dedicated to a business management model.
   Of course one's perspective is political!  Do we go back to our Deans
   and Business Advisory Councils and say "I'm developing theory to make
   business more liable"?
 
I have no problem with the research orientation, just that it might be so
   strong and unbalanced right in the heart of business education.
 
 
Peter  Bowal
University of Calgary
Alberta, Canada