Headline, December 23 2022/ ''' '' CAPITALISM SCRUTINY CAPTURES '' '''

''' '' CAPITALISM SCRUTINY 

CAPTURES '' '''

CAPITALISM IS UP FOR SCRUTINY AT ELITE BUSINESS SCHOOLS. Social justice has joined cash flows on syllabus for aspiring corporate leaders.

AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL - INSIDE A seminar room with a smattering of button-down shirts and puffy fall jackets, a group of future corporate managers were talking about capitalism.

WHAT MAKES capitalism truly and purely capitalism? What are its essential components? Property rights. Financial markets.

''Maybe this is almost so foundational that it's too much to put on the board - but scarcity?'' said Andrew Gibbs, 32, a second-year student who came to Harvard by way of the military. ''Would it be capitalism if people were comfortable?''

Prof. Debora Spar, who teaches the widely sought-after course ''Capitalism and the State,'' turned to Mr. Gibbs with the eye-glimmer of an instructor who knows the conversation is about to get heated. ''Would you go so far as to say a necessary condition for capitalism is scarcity, which is going to drive Inequality.

Mr. Gibbs paused, contemplating. ''I would say so.'' 

On the blackboard it went : Capitalism. Scarcity. Inequality.

Every year in the United States, some 250,000 young people step off the treadmill of their jobs, many in consulting and private equity, to chase skills and credentials that will turbocharge their future roles in consulting and private equity - by going to business schools.

They study accounting and negotiation. They learn about D.C.F.s [discounted cash flows] and three C's [company, customers and competitors]. They emerge with the ability to at least feign intimate knowledge of the godfather of shareholder primacy, referred to in one classroom as ''or buddy Milton Friedman.''

But today's business school students are also learning about corporate social obligations and how to rethink capitalism, a curriculum shift at elite institutions that reflects a change in corporate culture as a whole.

Political leaders on the left and right are calling for business leaders to reconsider their societal responsibilities.

On the left, they argue that business needs to play some role in confronting daunting global threats - a warming planet, fragile democracy. On the right, they chastise executives for distracting from profits by talking politics.

The corporate phenomenon of socially responsible investing, or E.S.G., has become a point of contention - as well as a $40 trillion industry. Elon Musk called it a ''scam'' after the S&P 500 removed Tesla from its Environmental, Social and Governance index last spring.

Top-ranked business schools are stepping into the political arena. Harvard started its Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society last month. Nearly half of the Yale School of Management's curriculum is devoted to E.S.G.

Next fall, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania will start offering M.B.A. majors in diversity, equity and inclusion in environmental, social and governance factors for business. 

BUSINESS SCHOOLS ARE NOT GENERALLY KNOWN for their radicalism, but their students and faculty are grappling, sometimes ambivalently, with fast changing expectations of business's role in society.

Most students are frank about the prestigious jobs they want, with hefty salaries attached. Now, though, they're facing sharper questions from classmates about how to balance their ambitions with some sense of responsibility to the public good.

''We're at Harvard Business School - it's a bastion of capitalism.'' ''I will say, though, that if you look at the courses being offered, the institutes being created and speakers we bring on campus, there is a huge demand both from the faculty and the students for rethinking the obligation of the corporation to society.

INSIDE CLASSROOMS, the range of views on corporate political engagement has broadened in recent years, according to people across leading business schools.

Assumptions long woven into the syllabus are open for questioning : the wisdom of maximising profits, the idea that America's version of capitalism is functioning properly.

What happens at Harvard, Wharton and other elite campuses offers a small glimpse of the changes in the corporate realm.

But at the same time, their graduates tend to have outsize influence on business, shaping the values and policies of the companies they may one day run.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Capitalism, the present and the future, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Emma Goldberg.

With respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of !WOW!, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of  the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - for every subject in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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