The Declaration of Business School Independence (Transcendence?)
IN COMMUNITY, July 27, 2016
The unanimous Declaration of the (n = number to be added) Jesuit [or other]Business Schools
When in the Course of global events, it becomes necessary for one academic community to abandon the intellectual framework which has bound them to another, and to teach the ways of producing and consuming that the needs of Nature and of Nature's Species call them to teach, a decent respect for the opinions of their colleagues requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to these new actions.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Business Schools are created to serve present and future generations, that they are endowed by their communities with certain inalienable Obligations, that among these are guiding business leaders to create Global Well-Being for present and future generations – care for the created world, right work, social justice, and poverty alleviation. --That to meet these obligations Business schools are instituted, deriving their just powers from the contributions they make to all species, --That whenever the Dominant paradigm of business school teaching becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Obligation of the academic community to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new practices, laying their foundation on such goals and organizing their teaching and research in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to move toward global well-being. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that business teaching long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that professors are more disposed to teach failing approaches, while their failures are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the theories to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of failures evinces a momentum to destroy the capacity of the planet to support human and other life, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such outmoded teaching, and to provide new thinking for their present and future well-being.--Such has been the passive sufferance of these faculties; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former theories and their teaching thereof. The history of the present Neoliberal global paradigm taught in business schools is a history of apparent success and hidden failures, both having the direct effect of exhausting the resilience of the people and destroying the capacity of the planet to support them. To prove this conclusion, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Business teaching has refused to Assent to Laws of the Universe and husbanding of a finite planet's resources, that are most wholesome and necessary for all species' well-being.
Business teaching and research in all fields has contributed to creating armies of graduates bent upon destroying the capacity of the planet to support all species while feeling they are contributing to the world and proud of themselves as they do so:
Dominant mainstream Finance teaching and research
has explicitly denied that business companies exist to serve society, arguing that they are the property of only their shareholders with the solitary obligation of obeying laws passed by an unbiased government,
has ignored business investments in corrupting law makers into setting rules beneficial to specific businesses and harmful to the polity as a whole,
has promulgated, as an article of Faith, the Myth that shareholder wealth maximization will serve all members of society fairly, justly, and effectively, while ignoring contrary evidence – Arguing that an invisible hand will solve all problems when markets are left alone to do their magic,
has ignored the complexity and magnificence of our species by characterizing it as Homoeconomicus-money grubbing, homogeneous entities interested only in getting and spending money on themselves,
has twisted the evolutionary reality of cooperation for species survival into a Myth of unbridled competition "red in tooth and claw" as the secret of business and societal success,
has the hubris to teach and believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that our species is smart enough to create compensation contracts for executives that cannot be gamed and will actually yield optimal long-term results for their companies and societies,
has promulgated the Myth that senior executives, by their brilliant leadership and by themselves, create great companies and deserve compensation packages that would be the envy of King Croesus,
has promulgated the Myth that a "free market" of CEO talent exists and functions effectively to yield excellent company leadership, justly compensated,
has championed massive inequality in compensation between top executives and lowest paid organizational employees while ignoring the malicious impacts of such inequality,
has failed to bring into everyday teaching and research the tragic consequences of income inequality within and across societies
Dominant mainstream marketing teaching and research
has accepted without challenge the dominant finance narrative of what business's rightful role is in society
has become a vehicle for teaching students to take-make-waste-faster-and-faster-for-the-richer-and-richer,
has succeeded in making consumerism the new global religion,
has moved from meeting human needs to creating human wants, only partially satisfying them, and re-creating them in unending repetition,
Dominant mainstream accounting teaching and research
has accepted without challenge the dominant finance narrative of what business's rightful role is in society,
has devoted its efforts to tracking only the financial impacts of company actions,
has ignored the wide range of other impacts business has on individuals, societies, and nations
Dominant mainstream business economics teaching and research
has embraced whole-heartedly the dominant finance narrative of what business's rightful role is in society,
has championed Gross National Product is the key, or sole, determinant of human well-being,
has assumed that GNP can increase exponentially forever on a finite planet,
has ignored the complexity and magnificence of our species by characterizing it as Homoeconomicus-money grubbing, homogeneous entities interested only in getting and spending money on themselves,
Dominant mainstream management teaching and research
has accepted with barely a whimper the dominant finance narrative of what business's rightful role is in society,
has devoted itself to guiding students to be successful in business as usual within that finance/Neoliberal narrative,
has largely ignored the need for, and methods of, bringing about transformation of business and all organizations into vehicles for global well-being,
has ignored the rights and needs of future generations in its research and teaching
Dominant mainstream ethics teaching and research
has accepted without challenge the dominant finance narrative of what business's rightful role is in society,
has devoted itself to guiding students in ways to define ethical business issues and decisions, and perhaps to act on them, within the dominant business paradigm,
has excluded future generations from ethical analyses and proposed actions
A business education, whose character is thus marked by every act which may create a vehicle for creating selfish sociopaths as business leaders bent on destroying the earth for their own benefit, is unfit to be a guide of present and future generations.
Nor have we, as Business Educators, been attentive to the concerns of our colleagues in other professions nor to the empirical evidence developed by them. We have been warned from time to time of the damage being done to the planet's capacity to support our species and the cultural and social damages done by unregulated businesses acting locally and globally. We have been reminded of the hollow and empty lives that result from the religion of consumerism and the loneliness and despair created by dog eat dog business practices. We have been reminded of the tragedy of destroying the beauty of nature and the inhumanity of treating other species as only vehicles for satisfying human wants. We have ignored appeals to integrate our native justice and magnanimity into our teaching and research and have conjured up excuses to disavow our higher feelings, which, if acted upon, might inevitably interrupt our own career progress. We too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
We now must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity of our Separation from our outmoded and destructive teaching and research, and hold ourselves called to discover and make real a new Business teaching and research that will create a flourishing world: holding ourselves and the rest of mankind, Partners in global well-being.
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We, therefore, the (n = number to be added) Jesuit [or other] Business Schools
in Community Assembled, appealing to peoples of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these universities, solemnly publish and declare, That these Business
Schools are, and of Right ought to be Free to transform their business curriculum to create global well-being; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to outdated and destructive myths and theories, and that all intellectual connection between them and those myths and theories, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Business schools, they have full Power to create new curricula and pursue meaningful research that will contribute to Global well-being and to the flourishing of our own and all other species. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the beneficence of the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change grant, we mutually pledge to each other our Time, our Academic Reputations, and our Sacred Honor.
Planned next step: replace the names below from the United States Declaration of Independence with the names of the participating Business Schools and perhaps their key officers.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
| Georgia: Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton | North Carolina: William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton | Massachusetts: John Hancock Maryland: Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton | Pennsylvania: Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean | New York: William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark | New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Massachusetts: Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott New Hampshire: Matthew Thornton |
Copyright © James A.F. Stoner, 2016, slightly edited February 22, 2017
Note: This playful and serious rewriting of the US Declaration of Independence was drafted while returning from the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools' 22nd Annual World Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, where the following resolution was passed unanimously by the assembled delegates and approved the following day by the IAJBS Board of Directors:
The annual meeting of the IAJBS requests the IAJBS leadership, CJBE leadership, and the rest of the network of Jesuit business schools to work together to apply for the MacArthur Foundation 100 million dollar 100&change competition with a project to transform Jesuit business education to be fully aligned with the wisdom in Laudato Si, with our universally-valid Jesuit educational tenets, and with the need for global sustainability, social justice, and poverty alleviation.
The declaration was drafted during the 100&change application process but not included with the submission