Promethean Business: From Financial Hedonism to Financial Eudaimonia

Abstract

The story of Prometheus and Pandora serves as an apt analogical device through which to demonstrate the impact that publicly traded corporations, and the shareholder primacy approach to corporate governance has created unintended consequences. Prometheus’s benevolent gift of fire led to the collateral damage of Pandora’s Box unleashing ills on mankind. Similarly, incorporation was a positive development that supported businesses lasting beyond one generation of owners, and led to businesses thriving and creating innovations that improve our lives. However, with these innovations and the related consumption has come a figurative Pandora’s Box of ills to society, including but not limited to widening income inequality, greater personal debt, and environmental degradation. In this critical essay, Greek mythology and classical philosophical approaches to happiness are intertwined with corporate approaches to stakeholder and shareholder optimization.

Does Organizational Nonsense Make Sense? Laughing and Learning From French Corporate Cultures

“…Fiction has been increasingly used in interpretive research (Rhodes & Brown, 2005; Vickers, 2015) and there is a well-established literature examining and arguing for the value of various “creative, poetic, artistic, aesthetic, and narrative devices, including fiction, creative nonfiction, semifiction, poetry, and photography” to support research in social sciences (Vickers, 2010, p. 561). Fiction can provide vivid analogical devices (Edelson, 2017) to support the study of organizations (De Cock & Land, 2006). It has been argued that “explicitly fictional stories can be regarded as appropriate empirical material for organizational research” (Rhodes & Brown, 2005, p. 469), which provides “a new intertextual arena within which theories of organization can come to life” (Phillips, 1995, p. 635).…”

“…If effective, these should represent nonsensical aspects of certain French corporate cultures and support interpretive explanations that help to understand these cultures. As a disclaimer, I hold no intention of offense: the tragicomic fiction I propose is an analogical device (Edelson, 2017) that some may perceive as a critique of French corporations, but my sole intention is to shed light on some poorly understood cultural aspects. I hence invite all who could take offense to be a good sport and, possibly, share a laugh.…”

Reframing the Purpose of Business Education: Crowding-in a Culture of Moral Self-Awareness

“…This demand for sustainability both from corporates as well as students has resulted in an increase in mandatory business and society courses in business schools from 34% in 2001 to 79% in 2011 (Hoffman, 2018). In this manner, workplace postmaterialism (Giacalone & Jurkiewicz, 2004), spirituality (Fry, 2003), and new virtue-based alternatives to financial hedonism (Edelson, 2017) point to the kind of progress Keynes intimated.…”