I said I would blog about some of the interesting facts and insights that I am gathering while reading “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession” by Harvard Business School’s Rakesh Khurana. Think of this as Sharda Cliff Notes.

Here’s one of them. On page 30, Khurana traces the origins of modern management theory to the industrial production process, where the relationship of management and workers as an extension of the relationship between engineers and machines. He cites the influence of Frederick W. Taylor’s ideology of “scientific management.”

Taylor’s methods essentially served to cast managers as the brains of organizations and workers as the brawn, inviting all of the hierarchical implications suggested by that model.

Khurana also mentions recent scholarship by Princeton’s Martin Ruef in the Department of Sociology. Ruef traces management relations from the 19th and 20th century to stategies to subdue and control slaves in the Roman Republic and antebellum south. How much of these approaches to we retain in management strategies of today? Many people do feel like slaves at work.

before/after

Dominican baseball star Sammy Sosa’s skin seems to be turning white. His publicist can say whatever… metrosexual skin treatments, bad lighting, lemon astringent… But, coupled with the permed hair and green contact lenses, there’s a pretty complete story. He probably doesn’t like being Black.

Is this new? Heck no. Skin lightening and a million potions for becoming more Euro-lovely have existed for a long time. My grandma used them, I’ve seen them around the world, and I even used them when I was much younger and confused about how I matched what society told me was pretty.

It seems that every country where people are pigmented has an aesthetic caste system based on color. Latin cultures are certainly no different. That’s why I find the concept of the monolithic “Latino” to be so perplexing — as are the generic images of tanned people with straight hair that are universally meant to depict “Latin” in pop culture.

I’m not a Latina. I was just mistaken for one enough times on the streets of New York that I decided to finally learn Spanish. At least then I could give directions to the people asking me for help every day. I spent time throughout Latin America and noticed something interesting:  a heck of a lot of Black people. Then I noticed something else, few of them wanted to be identified as “Black” because that was bad, just about as bad as being identified as indigenous or “Indian.”

To this day, I find it rare to hear a genuine conversation about race and Latinos. If anything, hopefully the fact the Sammy Sosa is being accused of pulling a Michael Jackson might start a dialogue about the reality of skin color and the social invisibility of darker Latinos.

What pops to mind is one of my Latin college professors joking that if you watched typical Spanish-speaking television dramas, you would think that they were cast in Sweden.

I spoke at a panel for women entrepreneurs last weekend, where I asserted that community organizing might be an “it” skill of the new generation.

I know there have been a few disparaging public remarks made about “community organizing,” as though it were some sort of euphemism for misspent youth. I’ve worked with quite a few community organizers over the years. I won’t deny that some of them are living in their own stratosphere. However, many others are monumental in skills of doing much with little and are profoundly good at influencing people.

These days everyone from authors to politicians to non-profits to corporate brands are trying to motivate the masses to “follow” or “fan” them. Remember when technology was good to have and how rapidly it became essential to existence? Similarly, having a social presence and community was once a nice bonus but is becoming unavoidable for nearly all of us.

I’m not saying that everyone should go out and try to be a community organizer but we could benefit from looking at their skills, strategy and purpose. How is all this digital wrangling of supporters, friends, and contacts really all that different from good, old fashioned community organizing dressed up in the latest threads?

So, I guess that I would say that there’s hope for the legions of young people who were galvanized around Obama’s message of social progress in the last election, and propelled themselves into organizing (as reported by Elizabeth Mendez Berry in her cover story in the Nation this month). Some of them are struggling to find their place in this discouraging new job market.

Sure they still have more to learn, but I think now more than ever, they deserve credit for a legitimate skill. The many people out there scrambling to make rhyme or reason out of the great new frontier of digital campaigning will hopefully figure out that there is value in putting their experience to good use.

Visionary: somebody of unusually acute foresight and imagination

Tool: One who lacks the mental capacity to know he is being used.

I graduated from an MBA program this year. It was an unconventional route for the likes of me: someone with a ten year track record of being a human rights proponent. MBA and human rights don’t normally break bread together. When business crosses paths with human rights advocates, it’s often at the wrong end of an angry press release. I went looking for a new bag of tricks for innovative thinking. I wanted to get outside of my box but are MBA programs poised to break new ground or are they just a different kind of box?

I’ve been reading “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession” by Harvard Business School’s Rakesh Khurana. I would seriously recommend this book for every MBA, especially those who fall into the “unconventional” bucket like myself.

Beach reading, it ain’t. It’s way more academic and dense than the typical MBA article/case but it’s brilliant and thorough. Presumably most MBAs will never bother to wade through it and many have zero curiosity about the social transformations and controversies that created the modern MBA curriculum. But that might just prove the author’s thesis: MBA programs have deviated from their original purpose of producing thoughtful intellectual leaders with broad business acumen, and instead have become vocational factories for corporate managers.

He has some good points. I’ll share as many as possible on future blog posts because, like I said, not everyone likes to read 500+ pages on this kind of thing. One of them relates to me as a liberal arts college graduate. We’re a bit against the grain in business school. We like controversies, critical thinking and chasing interesting experiences (even when we don’t get paid for it).

Turns out MBAs were originally conceived as liberal arts poster children. Instead of learning formulaic thought, they were supposed to ask probing questions and think different. Is this true for MBA programs today? If not, what does the change from “higher aims” to “hired hands” indicate about contemporary business leadership?