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