The Road to Hell is Paved with "The Greater Good"

(Response to article in NY Times, May 30th)

by K.A. Peterson

       Harvard MBA students are making news by pledging as business managers to "serve the greater good" as their first priority over other interests. Perhaps that sounds good when you think of Enron and Madoff, but the problem is in its translation to daily practice. What does it really mean and how will it really work? For instance, what might it mean to a banker who has to choose between placing funds with a loan applicant who’s got a great business plan and a solid chance of repaying the money or an applicant with a questionable plan and a traditionally disadvantaged racial profile? What might it mean to a manufacturer who is able to import raw materials at a major savings over the best domestic supplier? How exactly do business managers calculate the cost/benefit ratios involved in “greater good” decision making? Does a manager (even with a Harvard MBA) really have the tools to evaluate the benefits to “all” as opposed to “narrower” interests? 

       Wise and honest business leaders always consider the impact of decisions to community and neighbors. It's just good long-term visioning. On the other hand, advancing the "greater good" is likely just a buzz term for short-sighted collectivism that involves blindly following the rules of political correctness with no vision for its greater effects. No one manager can possibly calculate the impact of individual decisions on “society” at large. For practical purposes, making “greater good” decisions will ultimately involve eschewing one's explicit responsibilities to investors and stakeholders in favor of the pet policies of current political officeholders – whose primary objectives are usually as narrow as gaining and maintaining their own power. It sounds like a pledge to be a good community member and not to cheat. Fine. But, surely that is expected of all Harvard graduates and doesn't require a special oath. 

       Surely Harvard MBAs don’t need to make extra promises not to spit in the office coffee pot or steal supplies. Maybe the intention of the pledge in an era of widespread corruption is to restore public trust in private enterprise. Like other intentions, this one will make great paving material for the "wide" path that leadeth to destruction. 

       The reality is it can’t lead to actions that produce trustworthiness because it involves a breaking with fundamental trusts in the first place. It involves the best educated and brightest managers presumably trying to serve the broadest public interests (which are incalculable), while intentionally looking past the known interests of those who pay their substantial salaries. It involves effectively subordinating specific fiduciary obligations to nebulous social interests and the special self-interests of ambitious politicians. In short, the "pledge" card looks more like a ticket well past that place in hell reserved for the torment of usurers, well deeper than the place for thieves or even the fraudulent. Rather this pledge looks like a ticket to Dante's ninth and lowest circle of hell, where others who betray their masters reside.

© K.A. Peterson, www.nat-whilk.blogspot.com