Author’s note: This was originally published on September 17th, but due to an active discussion and some edits is being re-posted today.
Happy birthday, Occupy Wall Street! Exactly one year ago, you took to the streets and changed the conversation in America about economic justice. Bless your little blue-tarp-covered heart.
But, a year on (what’s a mere year, anyway?), the business schools continue their wooden zombie-stagger onward, celebrating ancient corporate achievements and engorging the impressionable intellects and egos of smart men and women with enough false consciousness to screw the 99% for significant portions of their careers (until they burn out or are brought up short by the tawdry injustice of what they’re doing).
Here’s the kind of MBA school I’d like to see: coopBschool !
A business school for the 99%.
A business school aimed at meeting human needs in a just, sustainable manner, instead of meeting the needs of the few and the rich at the expense of everyone else (and, at best, greenwashing the mess).
A business school that’s about humanity, community, and quality of life, not about dehumanization, extraction, exploitation, and the commodification of life.
The medium is the message, my friends. You can’t truly change the message without changing the medium.
Smash the B-school paradigm!
OccupyMBA!
Maybe you need to look to some work that has been done in b-schools. Check http://www.bgi.edu of which I’m an alum. It is what you’d like… with accreditation.
Ah, BGI. This is truly a gem and an exception – congratulations to you – but at the helm are the original founders – deeply sincere, ethical people who will ensure that the organization stays close to its mission and principles as long as they are around. It’s when things get large-scale, institutional, distant from their founding, and dependent on corporate handouts and recruiting validation that things run the risk of getting out of whack, IMHO.
I will note some of the lofty goals of your proposal will meet quickly with reality and you’ll want to consider working with folks like us to see how you might attract talent without “highly paid” folks, organize a flat organization, accept that research is a valuable part of being mission driven, etc… You’ll want to work with business trained people to better understand your market, risks, and how to set up a functioning coop (which is no small feat if you’ve been part of the driving leadership of one- and I know you haven’t been if you say “there is no leadership”).
Thanks for weighing in!
“Us” being?
What good’s reality these days without a few good lofty goals, to offset the base goals?
Yes, always need to stay close to practice. Absolutely.
Coops are hell, and have to have leaders. But so are top-down oligarchies. Choose your hell: one where you have no lever but hopes and self-belief, or one where you have those plus a share and a vote? Hell with or without some self-respect and dignity?
Hello- sorry I did not see your questions until now
Us being MBA’s trained to look at systems, business, and the potential for doing good in new ways. Us being folks that come from programs such as BGI and are spreading that philosophy as far and wide as possible.
In regard to the hell of coops vs. other organizational systems, I prefer to meet somewhere in the middle with relatively flat orgs and representation when you start to get beyond ~50. Complexity increases so much when trying to hear that many voices, the system breaks down. The occupy movement, for instance, got bogged down in process and leftists often fight amongst themselves while missing the ball on what more organized (and generally malevolent) groups are doing while other folks are busy with process. I have helped in building coops, and the risk in that type of system for education is spending less time on educating, by classroom or example, less time on creating shared value, and more time on process which turns many teachers and academics off, thus lowering the quality of your teaching staff as well.
And yes, I did read you were amongst the leadership tossed off a “sustainable MBA” so I’m hoping this isn’t created due to a chip on your shoulder. Might you be transparent and address your grievances directly? Get out that radical accountability…
All in good time.
Hope so- and I’m happy to talk confidentially back-channel as you’ve clearly got some great thoughts and experience with this
Kyle,
Back-channel or front-channel, I would very much enjoy a conversation with BGI about the implications of the coopBschool idea relative to the way in which BGI currently operates and is structured. I know that Gifford Pinchot, Jill Bamberg, and Don Piper are all interested in this. Is BGI the “permanent state-of-the-art,” the high-water mark, or is further innovation possible in MBA education that doesn’t amount to rearranging deck chairs?
Thankfully BGI does not hold itself up as the standard- they are innovating too and know there is still much to learn. Dean John Gardner is working with Gifford, Libba, Jill, and many others from inside and outside BGI (including a large cadre of students!) to continue the exploration of how to change business for good.
From a structural, procedural standpoint, how is accountability to/from students and alumni maintained and assured? Is it all an informal “we’re all one big community” arrangement, or do students share part of the real governance, and are alumni voting, dues-paying members for life? How many alumni are still engaged in this enterprise, 5 or 10 years on?
You wrote:
“It’s when things get large-scale, institutional, distant from their founding, and dependent on corporate handouts and recruiting validation that things run the risk of getting out of whack.”
As a fellow BGI Alum, I’d like to address this potential problem. The key driver of any system is the paradigm from which it operates. I believe that the BGI community, it’s founders, faculty, students, and supporters operate from a different set of values which helps inoculate the institution from losing sight of its mission and purpose.
Having been both a student and then a member of the faculty, I’ve never been a member of a community deeply committed to leadership and change. The community uses a social justice and ecological lens through which it views all decisions
BGI’s curriculum is open source and readily shared with the world. While the faculty begins with certain learning objectives, each course is co-created with the students as it evolves. BGI plans to grow and scale because the world needs scores of BGIs. Perhaps CoopBSchool could be the next.
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I very much hope you are right. My heart tells me so, but paradigms don’t exist apart from the people who enact them, and people come and go. I have come to believe in the integrity of individuals on a personal action and soul level, but the integrity of organizations lies in their structures and processes, which is why I want to explore ownership and cooperative governance that is legally as well as personally assured.
Yes, the world needs thousands of BGIs.
Thanks for your comments!
Really interesting stuff here. Can I also make a pitch for what is happening at the University of Leicester School of Management in the UK. This is a medium sized school, but one which is consciously positioning itself as being critical of the established ways of understanding business, management, markets and so. It now has a very heterodox staff, and a lot of interesting teaching and research. I worked there from 2003-10, then left, but have just returned because it seems to me that it is the only UK business school which is trying to embed this approach all the way through its curriculum. Not good enough yet, particularly on sustainability and so on, but we are trying.
Sounds like we need an exchange program with BGI, Stat!
Hello, Martin
This all sounds very hopeful, but is integrity strong and flourishing in your governance and workplace justice as much as you say it is in your (market) positioning, critical stance, and curriculum? Have you left traditional hierarchy and elitism, and entered an open, democratic, and truly collaborative mode? Perhaps faculty unions in the UK make this happen automatically, or? We Americans often forget that there is a certain amount of devilry and dysfunction that we’re continually complaining about that has simply been transcended and dispensed with in more enlightened parts of the world. However, the case of Prof. Ian Parker at Manchester Metropolitan University recently came to my attention. Is that sort of situation now impossible or at least unthinkable at Leicester?
No. I can’t promise that we are always open, democratic and collaborative. We are still a Business School providing income for an UK university, but we are trying to do our best. Freedom of speech is pretty much guaranteed though. There are lots of challenges here, but in the UK, the two places worth looking at for alternative ways of thinking are us and Essex. If someone from BGI wants to contact me on m.parker@le.ac.uk, I’d be very happy to talk about exchanges.
Hi Folks,
I’m wondering if you all know about St.Mary’s Masters in Co-op and Credit Union Management and how you feel it compares with the ideal or what you are discussing?
Sounds wonderful. Tell us more!