Criticism
Followers of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics often claim that business has no other duty than profits to shareholders, and that business therefore has a duty not to pursue environmental and social sustainability except where it increases profits. The extent to which such actions are profitable is much disputed. On the other hand, Friedman actually did not say that the duty to shareholders was absolute: corporations also had a duty to obey the law and compete fairly. Friedman's criticism has been debunked by legal scholars (e.g., Stout 2002), who have shown that Friedman had no legal basis for his conclusion. Corporate executives do not legally need to run the corporation for shareholders and could, in fact, operate the corporation to benefit society and environment. The fact that Friedman misunderstood corporate governance is no surprise as it was not his area of expertise, and the fact that the NYT Magazine allowed the mistake is not a surprise as it is not a double blind peer reviewed academic journal.
The debate must then turn to the question of what laws may properly be placed on corporate behavior to prevent fraud and other forms of malfeasance, and to ensure open and free competition, with what enforcement mechanisms. Also, whether corporate lobbying for subsidies and other legally-mandated advantages is fair, given that it is economically inefficient and indeed harmful. This question turns in part on the honesty and effectiveness of governments, where results are decidedly mixed. It also turns in part on the honesty and effectiveness of public pressure groups. Results there are also decidedly mixed.
Criticism of sustainable or "green MBAs" has also been heard from environmentalists and social activists. Some complain of corporate greenwashing, that is, of companies pretending to be sustainable or green by hiring graduates of these programs when the companies really are not. Some complain that the programs themselves are not sustainable enough, pointing to weaknesses in their curriculum and core proposition.
Read more about this topic: Sustainable MBA
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)