Today’s business schools were designed for a world that no longer exists. Capitalism raised the standard of living for billions of people over the past 150 years, but is now causing systemic challenges it is unable to address, including climate change and inequality. And yet, business schools continue to teach ideas that are making things worse: elevating the primacy of shareholder profits above the interests of employees, the environment, and society; viewing government as an intrusion on the free market rather than an arbiter of its proper functioning; and promoting unlimited economic growth despite the devastating environmental and social consequences. Business schools cannot simply drop an elective into their curriculum to address these challenges. We must rethink the faulty foundations.
Business School and the Noble Purpose of the Market explains the intellectual foundation MBA students, faculty, and administrators need to reform capitalism and restore its noble purpose for the 21st century. Many business students are in fact seeking this kind of education and frustrated that they are not getting it from their professors. This book will fill in gaps in their education, equipping them with the models and mindset to rethink shareholder capitalism and serve society’s needs. Business faculty and administrators will find a practical program for amending curriculum and pedagogy, changing student and faculty rewards, and bringing a new spirit and sensibility to the business school.
Andrew J. Hoffman
Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan
Author, Management as a Calling
February 17, 2022
About the talk
Business leaders have tremendous power to influence our society, how it operates, whether it is fair, and the extent to which it impacts the environment. And yet, we do not recognize or call out the responsibility that comes with that power. This session is meant to challenge future business leaders to think differently about their career, its purpose, and its value as a calling or vocation, one that is in service to society. Its message is for current and prospective business students, business leaders thinking anew about the role of business in society, and the business educators that train all these people.
We face great challenges as a society today, from environmental problems like climate change and habitat destruction, to social problems like income inequality, unemployment, lack of a living wage, and poor access to affordable health care and education. Solutions to these challenges must come from the market (as comprised of corporations, the government, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as the many stakeholders in market transaction, such as the consumers, suppliers, buyers, insurance companies, and banks), the most powerful institution on earth, and from business, which is the most powerful entity within it.
Though government is an important and vital arbiter of the market, business is the force that transcends national boundaries, possessing resources that exceed those of many nations. Business is responsible for producing the buildings that we live and work in, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the forms of mobility we employ, and the energy that propels us. This does not mean that only business can generate solutions or that there is no role for government, but with its unmatched powers of ideation, production, and distribution, business is positioned to bring the change we need at the scale we need it. Without business, the solutions will remain elusive. Indeed, if there are no solutions coming from the market, there will be no solutions. And without visionary and service-oriented leaders, business will never even try to find them.
Andrew J. Hoffman
Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan
Author, Management as a Calling
About the talk
Business leaders have tremendous power to influence our society, how it operates, whether it is fair, and the extent to which it impacts the environment. And yet, we do not recognize or call out the responsibility that comes with that power. This session is meant to challenge future business leaders to think differently about their career, its purpose, and its value as a calling or vocation, one that is in service to society. Its message is for current and prospective business students, business leaders thinking anew about the role of business in society, and the business educators that train all these people.
We face great challenges as a society today, from environmental problems like climate change and habitat destruction, to social problems like income inequality, unemployment, lack of a living wage, and poor access to affordable health care and education. Solutions to these challenges must come from the market (as comprised of corporations, the government, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as the many stakeholders in market transaction, such as the consumers, suppliers, buyers, insurance companies, and banks), the most powerful institution on earth, and from business, which is the most powerful entity within it.
Though government is an important and vital arbiter of the market, business is the force that transcends national boundaries, possessing resources that exceed those of many nations. Business is responsible for producing the buildings that we live and work in, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the forms of mobility we employ, and the energy that propels us. This does not mean that only business can generate solutions or that there is no role for government, but with its unmatched powers of ideation, production, and distribution, business is positioned to bring the change we need at the scale we need it. Without business, the solutions will remain elusive. Indeed, if there are no solutions coming from the market, there will be no solutions. And without visionary and service-oriented leaders, business will never even try to find them.
About Hoffman
Andy Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan; a position that holds joint appointments in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability. Professor Hoffman’s research uses organizational behavior models and theories to understand the cultural and institutional aspects of environmental issues for organizations.
He has published over 100 articles/book chapters, as well as 18 books, which have been translated into five languages. In this work, he focuses on the processes by which environmental issues both emerge and evolve as social, political, and managerial issues, including: the evolving nature of field level pressures related to environmental issues; the corporate responses that have emerged as a result of those pressures, particularly around the issue of climate change; the interconnected networks among non-governmental organizations and corporations and how those networks influence change processes within cultural and institutional systems; the social and psychological barriers to these change processes; and the underlying cultural values that are engaged when these barriers are overcome. He also writes about the role of academic scholars in public and political discourse.
Among his list of honors, he has been awarded the Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award (2016), American Chemical Society National Award (2016), Strategic Organization Best Essay Award (2016), Organization & Environment Best Paper Award (2014), Maggie Award (2013), JMI Breaking the Frame Award (2012), Connecticut Book Award (2011), Aldo Leopold Fellowship (2011), Aspen Environmental Fellowship (2011 and 2009), Manos Page Prize (2009), Aspen Institute Rising Star Award (2003), Rachel Carson Book Prize (2001), and Klegerman Award (1995).
His work has been covered in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, Scientific American, Time, the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Atlantic, and National Public Radio. He has served on numerous research committees for the National Academies of Science, the Johnson Foundation, the Climate Group, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development and the Environmental Defense Fund. Prior to academics, Andy worked for the US Environmental Protection Agency (Region 1), Metcalf & Eddy Environmental Consultants, T&T Construction & Design, and the Amoco Corporation. Andy serves on advisory boards for ecoAmerica, Next Era Renewable Energy Trust, SustainAbility, the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, the Center for Environmental Innovation, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Host
Sara Soderstrom, Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and Program in the Environment
A new essay, which was coauthored by two students and a professor at the Ross School of Business, offers important suggestions for leaders seeking a higher purpose in a profit-first world.
The authors write, “The big question for us, then, is: How can we succeed in a system that primarily rewards profit, with much less attention paid to social or environmental issues? How can we create real change while working in a corporate world that’s mostly stuck in outdated business models?”
The essay finds some answers in the wisdom of Paul Polman, former CEO at Unilever who developed the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. Polman is now co-founder and chair of IMAGINE, a nonprofit focused on sustainability.
Through a series of three interviews with Polman, the authors challenge their peers to take control of their business education, augmenting it when it falls short of their needs and goals. They derive three key lessons:
Take the time to discern your purpose and values.
Develop your sphere of influence.
When the opportunity arises, change the system.
The HBR essay explains how leaders can apply each lesson in their daily work.
In the end, the authors are prompted by a question from Polman: “What’s the game you’re playing here? For whom are you playing it?” They then ask the reader, “Do you choose to be a hero for the short-term, justifying your decisions to increase profits in the next quarter? Or do you choose to play the long game for the whole of humanity, seeking authentic, moral leadership that looks far beyond shareholder profits?”
Hoffman is a faculty associate at the Center for Positive Organizations and Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.
This article was originally published by Michigan Ross.
Society and democracy are ever threatened by the fall of fact. Rigorous analysis of facts, the hard boundary between truth and opinion, and fidelity to reputable sources of factual information are all in alarming decline. A 2018 report published by the RAND Corporation labeled this problem “truth decay” and Andy Hoffman lays the challenge of fixing it at the door of the academy. But, as he points out, academia is prevented from carrying this out due to its own existential crisis—a crisis of relevance. Scholarship rarely moves very far beyond the walls of the academy and is certainly not accessing the primarily civic spaces it needs to reach in order to mitigate truth corruption. In this brief but compelling book, Hoffman draws upon existing literature and personal experience to bring attention to the problem of academic insularity—where it comes from and where, if left to grow unchecked, it will go—and argues for the emergence of a more publicly and politically engaged scholar. This book is a call to make that path toward public engagement more acceptable and legitimate for those who do it; to enlarge the tent to be inclusive of multiple ways that one enacts the role of academic scholar in today’s world.
Sandra and Andy will discuss how we can move our scholarship towards engagement— and really making the kind of difference that is needed in today’s world.
The Intellectual Shaman series is hosted by IHMA as a Faculty Development format. It is co-sponsored by the Galligan Chair of Strategy at Boston College.
About Andy
In addition to his new book, The Engaged Scholar, Andy has also written extensively about purpose in Finding Purpose: Environmental Stewardship as a Personal Calling (Routledge, 2016), Management as a Calling: Leading Business School Serving Society (Stanford, 2021), and sustainability, including his pathbreaking book with John Ehrenfeld Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability (Stanford, 2013. He is also known for his work on sustainability and business and climate skepticism, taking many risks over the course of his career to follow his intellectual passions. Andy is author of more than 100 articles and chapters and 16 books to date.
About Sandra
Sandra is Galligan Chair of Strategy, Carroll School Scholar of Corporate Responsibility, and Professor of Management at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Winner of numerous awards, Sandra has published about 170 papers and 15 books, including Healing the World (Routledge/Greenleaf, 2017) and Intellectual Shamans (Cambridge, 2014), and most recently Transforming towards Life-Centered Economics (2020). Current research interests include large system change, corporate responsibility, intellectual shamanism, and management education.
Hoffman says his book aims to inspire researchers to engage—with the public, politicians, and practitioners—to improve the quality of science discourse in a society where the line between opinion and fact has blurred.
“Academic research is becoming increasingly irrelevant as the work becomes too insular, the language too opaque, the journals too inaccessible, the cultural norms of disciplinary boundaries too balkanized, and the reward systems cement these problems in place,” Hoffman says. “We need to break out of our siloed research communities and bring our work to a world that needs it.”
Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.
Young people entering certain careers like medicine, ministry or public service may see their choice as not only a way to earn a living, but also to serve society.
Andy Hoffman, professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business [and Center for Positive Organizations faculty associate], thinks students entering careers in management should take a similar approach.
Hoffman details his argument in a new book, “Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society,” which makes the case that fighting climate change and income inequality in particular will require this major shift in thinking. He has also discussed the idea, along with related topics, in a recent video from Ideas Roadshow, an appearance on the podcast “What’s America’s Purpose?,” and an interview with Economic Sociology.
“How will the world be different in the future, and what role will you want to have in making it a world you want to see? This is a question I want every business student and business leader to ask themselves,” Hoffman writes in the book.
He discusses these ideas, as well as the response by students as well as business experts and leaders.
Fighting climate change, income inequality, and other challenges will require a massive shift in society. Why do you believe business can and must be part of the solution—not just part of the problem, as some people think?
The market—corporations, the government, nongovernmental organizations and the many stakeholders in market transactions, such as the consumers, suppliers, buyers, insurance companies, banks, etc.—is the most powerful organizing institution on earth, and business is the most powerful entity within it.
Though government is an important and vital arbiter of the market, it is business that transcends national boundaries, possessing resources that exceed those of many nations. With its extraordinary powers of ideation, production and distribution, business is best positioned to bring the change we need at the scale we need it. Business is responsible for producing the buildings that we live and work in, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the automobiles we drive, the forms of mobility we employ, and the energy that propels them.
Indeed, if there are no solutions coming from the market, there will be no solutions. And without leaders, business will never even try to find them.
The book convincingly makes the case that seeing management as a calling will help address these crucial issues, particularly among today’s business students. How do you work this idea into your own classes? How do the students respond?
I find that students respond very positively to this framing. Twenty years ago, students who wanted to change the world turned to schools of public policy and nonprofit management for their training. Today, many are turning to schools of business management and they are bringing with them a desire to explore a new sense of the economic, social and environmental purpose of the corporation and their role as leaders.
By framing management as a calling, I am encouraging students to discern what kind of manager they want to be and then ask tough questions about the role of the corporation in society, the role of executives in leading them, and indeed the nature of capitalism as it is presently structured and as it could be structured in the future. This gives students a strong sense of agency, when many feel constrained by stale and outdated models of business management.
I recall one student who told me that she felt her values were under attack every time she walked into the building. These kinds of students are hungry for ways to augment their management education to fit their own vision of the kind of manager and executive they want to be.
I can imagine many cynics and critics questioning such a framing. How do you answer them?
Look, we are graduating countless business students, whether you like it or not. If we keep producing students that only want to increase the size of their bank account, we will continue to have the kinds of business scandals we have seen in recent decades. But if we can teach business students to seriously consider the vast power that they may someday possess to shape and guide our society, and learn the responsibility to wield that power carefully, we will be in much better shape. And, I would add, we are more likely to serve students by helping them find their best path.
Right now, we typically try to help them in this direction in one of two ways: ethical reasoning or the legal implications of corporate wrongdoing. But the first often strives to instill new values on fully formed adults or teach ethical reasoning to students who are paying a lot of money to learn other topics. The second only sets a worst-case baseline and does not inspire future business leaders to be their best, to achieve great things for their companies, for society and for themselves.
To help students look within themselves, to examine and discern their calling and their purpose in business, will yield much more powerful results.
Changing attitudes among current and future students won’t be enough—current business leaders, many of whom are set in old ways of thinking, will also need to change. How can they come to see management as a calling?
I wrote this book with business students and young professionals in mind. I hope that they will find inspiration to shape their education and young careers in a way that sets them on the right path. But more seasoned professionals may find value in the message of this book. It is never too late to set a new course in your life and find your calling.
I am reminded of an interview that Tim Hall, careers scholar at Boston University, conducted with a highly successful, mid-40s senior executive. Hall reported she was unhappy with what she thought was success and had an epiphany one day when she looked in the mirror and realized, “Oh my God, a 20-year-old picked my career!” To avoid her fate, I want to encourage business students to make wise and far-reaching choices today, to strive for greatness, and to measure that greatness by how others benefit from what you do. Think to serve in business, not just to accumulate.
In discussing how business students and managers must rethink their approach to government and regulation, what are you suggesting and how do you find that students respond?
It is surprising to me how few business schools offer courses on government lobbying, much less collaborative and constructive lobbying. Indeed, common perceptions are the government has no place in the market, that regulation is an unwarranted intrusion in the market, and that all lobbying is corrupt. These views are naïve and destructive.
Government is the domain in which the rules of the market are set and enforced, and lobbying is basic to democratic politics as governments seek guidance on how to set the rules of the market and usher reforms as needed.
I taught a new course in the winter 2019 semester called Business in Democracy: Advocacy, Lobbying and the Public Interest. It was offered jointly between the Ross School of Business and the Ford School of Public Policy, and to my surprise the course was filled at 70 students. Students told me that they were hungry for this kind of content.
They also said that many of their peers in their respective schools could not understand why they would take such a class. We need to change that kind of mindset—teaching students to see the value in government and business working in some kind of synergistic way. Companies with a mindset toward serving society can participate constructively in policy formation, seeking policies that help to make society and the economy strong and fair in the aggregate, not just for the select and affluent few.
You have another new book coming out this month, The Engaged Scholar. Is it fair to see that book as posing a challenge to academia similar to your other book’s challenge to business—to think more clearly about a responsibility to the broader society?
Yes, in a way. Both books are challenging the institutions as they presently exist—Management as a Calling is challenging the norms of business education and the role of business in society; The Engaged Scholar is challenging the norms of academic research and the role of the scholar in society. The rules of academia reward scholars for producing academic publications, but I would like to see those rules change so that more academics do the extra work to bring their scholarship to the public and political spheres that need it and can put it to use. In an era of fake news, alternative facts and misinformation, I would go so far as to say that it is our responsibility as academics to serve society, and I hope this book encourages more academics to try to do that. And where both books challenge the norms of their respective domains, both books also ask individuals to take it upon themselves to redirect their careers, even if those norms are slow to change.
Business leaders have tremendous power to influence our society, how it operates, whether it is fair, and the extent to which it impacts the environment. And yet, we do not recognize or call out the responsibility that comes with that power. This book is meant to challenge future business leaders to think differently about their career, its purpose, and its value as a calling or vocation, one that is in service to society. Its message is for current and prospective business students, business leaders thinking anew about the role of business in society, and the business educators that train all these people.
We face great challenges as a society today, from environmental problems like climate change and habitat destruction, to social problems like income inequality, unemployment, lack of a living wage, and poor access to affordable health care and education. Solutions to these challenges must come from the market (as comprised of corporations, the government, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as the many stakeholders in market transaction, such as the consumers, suppliers, buyers, insurance companies, and banks), the most powerful institution on earth, and from business, which is the most powerful entity within it. Though government is an important and vital arbiter of the market, business is the force that transcends national boundaries, possessing resources that exceed those of many nations. Business is responsible for producing the buildings that we live and work in, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the forms of mobility we employ, and the energy that propels us. This does not mean that only business can generate solutions or that there is no role for government, but with its unmatched powers of ideation, production, and distribution, business is positioned to bring the change we need at the scale we need it. Without business, the solutions will remain elusive. Indeed, if there are no solutions coming from the market, there will be no solutions. And without visionary and service-oriented leaders, business will never even try to find them.
Society and democracy are ever threatened by the fall of fact. Rigorous analysis of facts, the hard boundary between truth and opinion, and fidelity to reputable sources of factual information are all in alarming decline. A 2018 report published by the RAND Corporation labeled this problem “truth decay” and Andrew J. Hoffman lays the challenge of fixing it at the door of the academy. But, as he points out, academia is prevented from carrying this out due to its own existential crisis—a crisis of relevance. Scholarship rarely moves very far beyond the walls of the academy and is certainly not accessing the primarily civic spaces it needs to reach in order to mitigate truth corruption.
In this brief but compelling book, Hoffman draws upon existing literature and personal experience to bring attention to the problem of academic insularity—where it comes from and where, if left to grow unchecked, it will go—and argues for the emergence of a more publicly and politically engaged scholar. This book is a call to make that path toward public engagement more acceptable and legitimate for those who do it; to enlarge the tent to be inclusive of multiple ways that one enacts the role of academic scholar in today’s world.
Center for Positive Organizations (CPO) co-founder and core faculty member Cameron tells host Lisa Cypers that virtuous practices can create a positive business environment and impact government organizations for social good. He also shares the guiding principles from his latest book, Practicing Positive Leadership: Tools and Techniques That Create Extraordinary Results.
CPO faculty associate Hoffman discusses the key points of his recently published paper, “The Next Phase of Business Sustainability.” He also emphasizes the importance of rethinking what business schools teach and putting love into your work.
Cameron is the Russell Kelly Professor Emeritus of Business Administration, and Professor Emeritus of Higher Education at the University of Michigan.
Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan; a position that holds joint appointments at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the School of Natural Resources & Environment.
The discussion explores a “Re-Enlightenment” among religious and philosophical communities outlined in Hoffman’s article “Climate change and our emerging cultural shift.” The paper says faith leaders are positioned to help followers connect to climate change on a moral level and motivate them to take action.
“The answer comes down to a deep shift in our culture,” Hoffman tells Michigan Radio. “Which, the point I make in the paper, is on a scale akin to the Enlightenment or the Scientific Revolution or the Protestant Reformation. And the key to that analogy, there’s several: Those were fundamental shifts in our cultural beliefs as a species, a fundamental shift in our perception of the environment, and a fundamental shift in how we saw the two connected. And, importantly, those shifts took 100 years. … We can’t think about this as a sprint. This is a marathon.”
Hoffman—faculty associate of the Center for Positive Organizations (CPO), professor of management and organizations at the Ross School of Business, and professor of environment and sustainability at the School for Environment and Sustainability—studies the relationship between environmental issues and organizations.
What do we pursue as we seek success in academia? For most, the path to academic success focuses narrowly on A-level journal publications, which has caused a stealthy but steady erosion in the very essence of academia. In this essay, we explore that erosion by drawing on the poem by William Butler Yeats titled “What then?” to highlight the questions, doubts, and perils that lie at each of the four stages of academic life: doctoral student, junior professor, senior professor, and professor emeritus. We then offer a new set of questions that academics may ask at each stage to remain true to their sense of scholarly identity and calling. Our hope is to shine a critical spotlight on the modal journey and inspire a confident and courageous few to deviate from that well-trodden path and chart a course that is truer to the essence, purpose, and potential of academia.
