WHEN GOLDMAN SACHS SPEAKS -- COMMENTS!

WHEN GOLDMAN SACHS SPEAKS – COMMENTS!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© March 16, 2012

REFERENCE:

Some have written asking, “Do you cherry pick those responses you publish?  “Absolutely!”  I do comment on other remarks.

For example, I’m often asked why I’m so hard on MBAs.  I’m not hard on degree holders; I’m hard on the curriculum and the programming it imposes.  I wrote this in WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990):

Middle management has already died and is ready for burial.  It represents an anachronistic function, which is being deceptively retained by the MBA brigade.

Like a revolving door, one set of buffers to organizational performance is removed only to be replaced by an even more insidious set. 

The organization’s romance with the MBA needs to be necessarily a brief one.  The argument that the training of middle managers makes them good candidates for top management is a faulty one.  That is what we now have.  No, MBAs are wrong.  Middle managers are gophers and MBAs are mechanics to cipher ($) management.  Leadership requires more, much more (p. 295).

Elsewhere I write we have become a one-dimensional society:

Vocational education puts the emphasis on doing what makes people successful in their careers only, or towards a one-dimensional society.  In this context, an MBA is merely a vocational degree as if learning a trade in trade school.  Essentially ignorant of the world, many MBAs scoff at the mere mention of the cultural implications of their work, being trained in a set of skills (finance, management, information systems) that are unlikely to find them acculturated to the demands of the cultural world beyond (p. 261).

For ten years, I was an adjunct professor in the graduate MBA programs at such schools as the University of South Florida, St. Leo University, Golden Gate University, and George Mason University.  I taught management theory & thought, organization and leaderships development, and the psychology of management, among other courses. 

Students of mine will remember my thrust was to develop intellectual capital centered on minimizing management and maximizing the role of professionals in organizational life.

We are a capitalistic society, which operates in creative destruction.  That is our socioeconomic system.  Business gives us jobs and without business acumen the United States of America would cease to be the force in the world economy that it currently enjoys.  But it is our moral authority that fuels that engine.      

Recently, my grandson, a senior at Tampa Prep, invited me to give a lecture to his class in ethics and leadership.  It was apparent that neither the teacher nor the students had a firm grasp of the relationship, causing me to wonder what was the basis of the course other than to fill an elective. 

Can you imagine students flocking to colleges offering a Master’s Degree in Leadership & Ethics?  I can’t.  Students would wonder what the payback would be.  We do things today because of what we expect to get out of them economically not psychologically. 

By the accident of my birth I have traced this development throughout my career, causing me to retire the first time in my mid-thirties, and the second time in my mid-fifties.  As NASA used to say when something went wrong in space, “Houston, we have a problem!”  I say, “America, we have a problem.”  We have a problem those commenting here clearly recognize.

As high as ninety percent of Americans are ethical, but it is the other ten percent that create havoc for society.  It is not a good omen that many of this ten percent are near the top of our power structure.

MICHAEL WRITES:

Hi Jim,

My guess is Mr. Smith is sitting in his Manhattan condo suffering a serious hangover from his moral epiphany. It will be tough to find another company needing his skills and the accompanying moralistic op-ed bent.

You referenced ethics. Mr. Smith has been with GS for about a dozen years joining about the time many investors were getting their first sucker punch in the dot com bust. I could imagine him learning how to giggle as he told his cohorts how he just dumped a pile of dot com stock on an unsuspecting and trusting client fully knowing it was bout to go belly up.  It was also the time that Enron was exposed and consultants with Ethics Training Programs inundated the corporate world in hand. It took him twelve years to figure out he was wrong?

Extrapolating the timeline I would guess Mr. Smith was a Tween when the movie Wall Street came out. The movie highlighted some of the worst aspects of traders including the underhanded tactics Mr. Smith described.

There's some eleven year old somewhere, totally oblivious to the mini firestorm of moral navel gazing inspired by Mr. Smith, as he peddles watered down lemonade from some corner stand. Money never sleeps. Wall Street never changes. The rest of us never learn.

Michael

RITA WRITES:

Listened to that former Goldman Sachs man on CNBC this a.m. or might have been Bloomberg, anyway, I sat listening with my eyes wide open.  OK, so now all is absolved because we are playing by new rules for a while?  Amusing, elephant hunting.  Ethics went out the window when the last statesman shook his head and retired.  Usury?  The poor pay higher everything, credit rates, fees, on and on.  Who ever heard of 29.9% interest?  In the 50's?   And we the people get a % of a % on our Golden accounts?  Keep up the vanguard, shout out the alarm, why do we sit and take the crumbs, let us eat cake!!!!!!!!!!  We deserve it!  Jim Fisher you are right on!!!

Rita

CAROL WRITES:

Just had to reply to this one.  Quote from the Bible.  "The love of money is the root of all evil."  And I am sorry to say in the Business World Peggy Lee's song "Is that All There IS."   Yes, I am afraid in business that is all there is but the love of money.   Has been since forever.   

Carol

DON WRITES:

These are the people who have an MBA, a Masters Degree in Business Administration. It is what is taught in Business School.  Maximize Profit!

Don

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