Inhabited Chair: Back to Square One
My name is Zachary Wolfson, I’m a student at Northeastern doing my internship at Shoebuy.com. I will be writing weekly blog entries, which I modeled after “Monday Morning Quarterback” by Peter King who is a great sports writer and always gives some love to my Philadelphia Eagles. Every week, there will be a main story where I discuss something that is happening in the world at that time, my shoe thoughts of the week, where I share my thoughts on a couple of styles and my non-shoe thoughts of the week where I just share random thoughts for your enjoyment.
When I saw the headline, “Is it Time to Retrain B-Schools [Business Schools]” I was intrigued, as I am a business student myself. The article talks about how today’s card-carrying M.B.A.’s are ill-equipped to deal with the current economic crisis. It even goes so far as to explore the idea that the nature of how business is taught could be to blame for our predicament. Since the 1970′s, business schools have been following a warped version of the Milton Friedman school of thought. Milton Friedman believed that managers were simply agents of the owners of a firm whose sole objective was to maximize profit for the stakeholders. This is in contrast to what business schools have been teaching which is that managers must maximize profit for only the shareholders. A shareholder is really only one stakeholder; other stakeholders include employees, the government, creditors, consumers and the community at large. Admittedly, taking care of the shareholders first will also take care of other stakeholders indirectly, but the community at large is often left behind.
It is easiest to explain the situation using pollution as an example. For instance, the cheapest way to dispose of waste may be to dump it into a river. Now the company has served its shareholders by disposing of the waste in a way that maximizes profit. However, it has incurred a cost to the community downstream from the dumping site, because they now have to pay to clean up the water or get their water elsewhere. If the company had taken the community’s costs into consideration, they would have found another way to dispose of the waste.
If we carry this analogy over to the world of finance and replace dumping garbage in the river with finance executives making short term decisions with our long term investments, while also replacing the community downstream with the general public, you can see why we are in such a mess. This short term thinking came as a direct result of the way business schools have educated their students. The over emphasis placed on quick solutions to case studies in isolated environments has graduated a whole generation of business people who are not trained to think of the long term and of whoever else might be affected by their decisions. Business schools are now undergoing review processes for their curriculum and many schools are considering placing more of an emphasis on ethics and organic decision making, which is decision making that takes your entire environment into account. Hopefully, with new points of emphasis we can avoid the same kind of decision making that led us to the worst recession since the great depression.
Shoe Thoughts: Regardless of your decision making process you still need to look good so here are some shoes to help you there.
The Rockport Margin is our most popular men’s business shoe and it’s easy to see why. It has a classic refined look that is extremely comfortable to wear. Almost every person who writes a review for the shoe cannot believe how comfortable it is. For the utmost in style and class, the only shoes to wear are by Allen-Edmonds. You can always count on a high quality product that will last a long time from them. The Enzo Angiolini Liberty 39 is our most popular women’s business shoe. It has a classy, conservative look that tells everyone who sees you wearing them that you are a professional.
Non-Shoe Thoughts:
- LOST Thoughts:
- At the very end of the episode we get a glimpse of a young Benjamin Linus. He seems to have a thing for talking with Hostiles, the last time we saw him at this age he was talking to Richard Alpert.
- Sun is probably the coolest character on the show at the moment. First she buys up her father’s company because she’s tired of being pushed around and now she whacks Ben in the head.
- Frank Lapidus is an awesome pilot.
- Now that Sawyer made a big deal about being able to save Sayid, I’m pretty sure he’s going to die.
- The Office Thoughts:
- That was a pretty awkward episode, but I guess that’s why the show is funny.
- Jim was really upset that he blew it in front of the new guy, maybe he does care about his job after all.
- Michael Scott can’t quit, the show would be nothing without him, I can’t wait to see how this one plays out.
- As a marketing department here at Shoebuy.com, Inc. we all went to go see a band called Ozomatli at the House of Blues. They were very high energy and put on a great show. They played a real fusion of styles that I would compare to a band called Los Fabulosos Cadillacs but with more rapping. It was a lot of fun.
Thanks for reading. I always enjoy hearing from my readers so leave lots of comments on anything I’ve said. Please subscribe to the Shoebuyblog.com RSS feed and tell all your friends.
