progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
"Much of Stewart’s account is devoted to following the anti-Taylor and neo-Taylor
theories that have determined the curriculum at business schools in the course of the past
century. He pays special attention to human-factors science and follows through several
chapters the work of Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter, whose early books
“Competitive Strategy” (1980) and “Competitive Advantage” (1985) launched a field
known as strategic management. (I should perhaps mention that, in the late eighties,
Porter was my boss. His phone rang off the hook, and I, a temporary secretary, had the
job of answering it.) To Stewart, strategic management is scientific management, without
the stopwatch. And, along with much else taught in business schools, and everything that
goes on in management-consulting firms, “it contributes to a misunderstanding about the
sources of our prosperity.”
Business schools have been indicted before. Earning an M.B.A. has been found to have
little correlation with later business success. Business isn’t a science, critics say; it’s a
set of skills, best learned on the job. Some business schools, accused of teaching nothing
so much as greed, now offer ethics courses. Stewart argues that this whole conversation,
about people, production, wealth, and virtue, is a conversation about ethics, and is better
had within a liberal-arts curriculum. His howl of frustration, after all those years spent
living in hotels, peddling nonsense, and profiting by it, is loud and angry. It’s also only
half the story."
The point here is quite telling. Professors like Porter take a simple idea which may have
some merit and then use it as a template for solving everything including world hunger.
Porter has recently authored a book using his wordy methods in the area of health care
and in my opinion he would have spent his time more wisely working as a practical nurse
at Mt Auburn Hospital for a year of two.
Now back to Brandeis. Whereas Lepore is well written, insightful, clear, perceptive, the
recent biography of Brandeis by Urofsky is at the other extreme. The subject of the book
is compelling. Each sentence is well written yet each paragraph jumps from thought to
thought in a cacophony of words. The book is virtually unreadable. He jumps back and
forth so as to give the reader a migraine.
In addition Urofsky addresses the two issues, the Taylor issue and the Privacy issue with
the slightest of a touch. The Taylor issue as Lepore states is a truly groundbreaking issues
as regards to the courts and judicial thinking. It is one of the first ways in which
"scientific" results were introduced into the legal system. Taylor was an "expert" and his
results were left unquestioned. In many ways this was one of Brandeis' lowest moments,
he failed to do to science what it does to itself, and what is at the core of the legal system
as well, adversarial analyses.
4.6.3 Privacy and the Individual
Secondly the classic work on Privacy Warren and Brandeis state:
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