Page 188 - Accelerating out of the Great Recession

A NEW MANAGERIAL MIND-SET

ness. Some of this debate is a thinly veiled attack on Anglo-
Saxon market-based capitalism. For such critics, the crisis was
proof that free-market capitalism had failed. They saw the eco-
nomic meltdown as the triumph of greed, characterized by a
lack of concern about the impact of actions on others, coupled
with the pursuit of personal wealth at any price. At the British
Labour Party conference in the autumn of 2009, Gordon
Brown, the U.K. prime minister, maintained, “What failed was
the . . . idea that markets always self-correct but never self-
destruct. What failed was the right-wing fundamentalism that
says you just leave everything to the market.” 4
Apart from this political rhetoric, however, there is a serious
underlying debate about what constitutes fair capitalist behav-
ior—in other words, what is ethical in business. While most busi-
ness leaders did, of course, adhere to strict ethical principles, there
is pressure to move the borders of what is defined as good or bad
behavior—and, by inference, what is good or bad ethics. The G-
20 group of advanced economies may find it convenient to deflect
all blame for economic mismanagement onto the unconstrained
behavior of the business system, but they are also responding to
public pressure to rein in the excesses. More than two-thirds of
the executives we surveyed expect an increase in public scrutiny
of business ethics and personal excesses. This figure was even
higher for the United States and the United Kingdom.
Some of the debate has criticized the teaching at business
schools, the primary recruiting ground for the finance industry. In
recent years, nearly 40 percent of the graduates from top business
schools have accepted positions in finance. A new oath to serve
the greater good, taken voluntarily by students at Harvard
Business School, met with a mixture of plaudits and cynicism.
There are other, more fundamental changes taking place in cur-

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