Strengthening capitalism through philanthropy: The Ford Foundation, managerialism and American business schools

Abstract

Business schools have played a significant role in creating and sustaining many of today’s grand challenges, including income inequality, the gig economy and climate change. Yet calls for change go unanswered. With a critical perspective on philanthropy, an understanding of power and historical reflexivity, this article helps develop our understanding of why business schools are so deeply rooted in managerialism and so resistant to change. Through archival research, I show how the Ford Foundation used its money and influence in the 1950s to embed a managerialist ideology in American business schools as part of its efforts to sustain and strengthen the capitalist system. Through its outward face of objectivity and neutrality, combined with targeted support of specific schools, individuals and research, the Ford Foundation went beyond shaping the structure and curriculum of business schools to shaping the ideology and identities of management scholars. The more that we, as business academics, understand the full histories of our own institutions and the often hidden or ignored sources of power that played a role in their development, the easier it will be to change business schools in ways that fit our current contexts and support our current and future needs.

The ghost of capitalism: A guide to seeing, naming and exorcising the spectre haunting the business school

“…Presently influential initiatives that purport to orient the business school curriculum towards ethical reflection and practice such as PRME do not engage with the notion of political ideology (PRME, 2020). Critical commentators increasingly argue that rather than providing students with tools for challenging the ideological status quo, business schools are becoming more and more aligned with the capitalist and managerialist value and practice systems (Jones and Andrews, 2019;McLaren, 2020;Thrift, 2005in Contu, 2009. We argue that these findings point to the ghostly status of capitalism within the business school.…”

Institutionalising intra-organisational change for responsible management education

“…Some of these critiques represent a fundamental challenge to their purpose and indeed to their historical raisons d'etre (Augier and March 2013). This is true particularly in the case of business schools that are located in Anglo -American shareholder capitalist countries (Conn 2019;McLaren 2020). According to this worldview, business schools are a 'lost cause' in this type of institutional and environmental context (Parker 2018;Conn 2019).…”

Invoking indigenous wisdom for management learning

“…Neoliberal tenets of individual responsibility, self-interest, free markets, free trade, limited government, and constant, never-ending growth (Monbiot, 2016; Pirson, 2017) dominate management and economic thinking (Lovins et al, 2018; Monbiot, 2016; Piketty, 2014; Waddock, 2016). Business schools themselves are implicated in the so-called grand challenges facing the world (Collien, 2018; McLaren, 2020). Consistent with the idea of “challenging conventional ideas and received wisdom” around this thinking (Bell and Bridgman, 2017, p. 4) and opening up new ways of thinking about management learning (Bell and Bridgman, 2018), our aim is to invoke Indigenous wisdom for management learning.…”

“…Our main contribution is to propose an integrative perspective (Bell and Bridgman, 2017) arguing for the emergence of an economics (or a new economics) and set of management theories based in Indigenous wisdom that particularly emphasizes life-affirming values of relationship, responsibility for the whole system (stewardship), reciprocity, and redistribution (equity) (Harris and Wasilewski, 2004). Indigenous ideas, prevalent from ancient times ((Burm and Burleigh, 2017; Genova, 2015; Huaman and Abeita, 2018; Tran and Kennett, 2017; WIPO, 2019), are not typical of today’s management theories, which have recently been shown to be ideologically restricted to ideas about efficiency, profit maximization, and managerialism (McLaren, 2020)—to the exclusion of other important values. In contrast, we argue—and demonstrate through global examples—that numerous Indigenous cultures have developed successful, long-lived societies (and, but not just, economies) based on a different, holistic and relationally-based set of values.…”

“…Banerjee noted problems associated with modern industrial agricultural practices, which have resulted in destructive approaches like monocropping. We add industrial animal husbandry, clearcutting of forests, use and production of toxins in manufacturing, and destructive mining practices, among many other ecologically and sometimes societally problematic practices associated with today’s economic system—all associated with dominant goals of “efficiency,” productivity, and profit (c.f., McLaren, 2020).…”