The Golden Passport audiobook

Duff McDonald was in need of a good punching bag and he found it in Harvard Business School. Once he had set it up to the right height he punched the hell out of it. I have read these set of books before the likes of When Genius Failed, or Enron's The smartest guys in the room but this is the most stinging indictment I have ever come across. I wonder if the decision of HBS to deny him access played a part.Duff picked apart HBS from its founding idea to what it is today, the language was so scathing that I feel for any HBS staff or alumni reading it. He accused it of academic capture, and its case method a sham used by corporations to clean their image. He even posited that they were in the business of reinventing the obvious and calling it ground breaking. One of guys interviewed said reading books from HBS staff is equivalent to eating cardboard for dinner, it has zero nutritional value.The pillorying of HBS aside, one of the minority thesis of this book deserves merit. The idea first put forward by Milton Friedman that business exists to maximize shareholder value. This toxic idea has led to mercenary business that are looking after the bottom line always trawling the world for sweatshops in the name of cutting cost. HBS stands accused for allowing this notion to seep in the business community and poison capitalism. Before getting into business school a person always thinks that a business should exist to help the community around it and various stakeholders, after leaving business school they think its purpose is maximizing shareholder value. This intellectual sham needs to be called out before the runaway inequality it has spawned threatens the very edifice of the human race.The strength of this book lies in the extensive research Duff did, the not so good bit is that he picked HBS apart decade by decade and the story seemed similar all through that I felt stricter editorship should have reigned in on this repetition. I think in as much as Duff claimed he had no bone to pick, it seemed that he had and I would not quote this book on serious circles. This is the kind of book you talk with your left leaning friends over drinks. In my opinion Duff did a good job and the criticism was warranted.

This book will make you angry while it informs you. The author makes a very good argument for the ills in our capitalist society deriving from the MBAs running companies into the ground.

You’d think that a 25 hour audiobook about Harvard Business School would be boring, but you’d be wrong. This laid bare what went wrong with the social contract of America at it’s heart. When the MBAs from HBS and their ilk hit a rough going in the 1970s, after nearly three decades of unchallenged supremacy on the world stage, they bailed. They tried to cut their way to growth, which anyone who pays attention knows doesn’t work as a long term strategy. They financialized the corporation and the economy as a whole, sending our best and brightest not out to build the next great thing, but to make fortunes at Wall St investment banks building mathematical models predicting profit. The HBSers abandoned the age-old relationships and social contracts that work had with the people, and laid it bare on the altar of Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder value. The likes of Michael Jensen held forth at HBS for decades the share value maximization dogma which ended up having the asylum run by the inmates, who were only motivated to make short term riches. The only thing that was important was making cheddar. Lots and lots of it. Gone was the drive for innovation, customer satisfaction, quality, and fidelity to the community. Even the likes of Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built schools, libraries and hospitals for the public; the only thing being built by these new titans were their bank balances and yachts. What did we get for this suffering? Enron. Mortgage backed securities collapse in 2008. And that’s just since 2000.HBS has been trying to “professionalize” business management for over a century now, and have utterly failed. They’ve tried, somewhat half-heartedly by this telling, to also codify “ethics” into the curriculum as well, and met with the same level of success, as in none.HBS styles itself as an institution of higher learning, training future leaders using what they call the “case method” for unambiguous teaching. This is utter garbage. The “cases” are prepared with cooperation of their subjects, so if you don’t want a case, one is not prepared. A huge bias that goes unacknowledged by Harvard. Nothing negative is apparently ever written by HBS. This is a blind spot of such tremendous scope and breadth that managed to go unaddressed by the greatest minds of the 20th and 21st centuries that it boggles the mind. It has only recently (2017) that they’ve even given in to any alternative pedagogical method. God forbid some scientific hypothesis are proposed, researched, tested, and dis/proven. A shocking lack of imagination.This nearly criminal level of chicanery should be a stain not just on HBS, but Harvard University itself for decades to come. They’ve managed in the last 50 years to destroy the very fabric of the American Experiment to the point that it is feared lost.What is most shocking is that no one apparently noticed. Or really even cares.

This is a history of American business as much as it is a history of the Harvard Business School, underscoring how intricately the two are intertwined. Going back to the late 19th century founding of the school, the author demonstrates how Harvard has educated and defended pivotal American business leaders and provided training and connections to the American government. Through its graduates, it plays an outsized role in the American (and global) economy, making its flaws disastrous to millions. I appreciated the author's argument, and, although I don't know that I fully accept some of its finer points, it is revealing to see connections between Harvard Business School, its educational methods, and business elites.

Having had an inside view at HBS, I felt as McDonald was justified in much of his criticism of the school (I worked at HBS from 2006-20120. This book does not diminish HBS's standing or influence in society although it does chink the armor of such an elite institution. In a discussion with many HBS alumna about the book, I was told that they are still superbly grateful for the opportunity HBS afforded them. Given the current #metoo environment and strong feminist push, they felt, with hindsight, that perhaps they could have done more to forward the role women played at the school during their time there.

Success of the Harvard's MBA program following the case method of teaching adopted, problems and pitfalls faced enroute, the leaders who brought it to its World renowned stature, its graduates who went on to lead the World's largest and most successful business (and other) organizations, and over a century's HBS's history, its all rolled into one in this book. A work of great research. Harvard having reached where it has, the book makes you wonder - what is the success actually achieved, at what cost, and to whom?

A thorough-going history of the school that, since 1908, has provided the world with a large percentage of its de facto leaders – not so much leaders in the realms of politics, but the leaders of the world behind the world of politics – the world of very big money.

Immensely informative and well-researched. If you're looking to understand our culture's enamored fascination with Capitalism, this is a great resource. Mr. McDonald illuminates Harvard Business School and its nature not as it would like, but how it really is.

"This is a rambling, colorful disquisition on the history of management theory in America in the twentieth century! I thought you said this was a history of Harvard Business School.""Duffman says a lot of things! OH, YEAH!"

6/13/2017

I didn't agree with all of the criticisms, but certainly many. Well worth reading.

I went into this book cynically, critical of those who would want the premier business school of the world to be more than a business school. And the weird short chapters format didn't help the flow one bit.But I kept coming back to this sentence: The promise of HBS, comfortably ensconced in the bosom of one of the country's greatest universities, was to remain free of undue corporate influence and to engage the fundamental problematic of their subject and of their time, which was how to ensure that power actually be used to make the world a better place.The author convincingly makes his point that due to professors chasing lucrative consulting opportunities and the administration chasing rich donations, they lost their way. The oldest way is this: the love of money is the root of all evil.Lots of great funny lines are undercut by cheap shots and a bizarre overreaching premise that HBS caused the economic crisis because so many of their alums are in positions of powers.But I came to believe that calling Harvard to its highest calling was an important mission for the author to take. It will make you think more than most books will.