In 1937 Coase explored the ‘nature of the firm’ and concluded economists cannot explain why firms exist, why their boundaries are where they are, why their internal arrangements are as they are, or why their performance is so varied. Without a viable theory of the firm we educators have no sound basis for teaching managing them. Economists have not yet answered Coase’s questions and our discipline seems to ignore the implications. More precisely we have no theories of the firm that (...) can explain profit, yet surely our students are headed into managing profit-seeking? If we follow Knight’s intuition and introduce uncertainty we create great difficulties for those managing business schools, as Simon observed in his 1967 paper on designing them : 1–16, 1967). This essay explores the implications for business schools of seeing a firm as a local language that indicates what must be attended to and how that should be treated if value and profit is to be created. (shrink)

The proper purpose of any human institution is to improve the lives of the people who depend on it. If we support that proposition, then is there any place for a private-purpose corporation? The question becomes especially urgent as society and the human species face growing threats.This paper posits that the private-purpose corporation, and the neoliberal ideology that affirms it, are major drivers of the social and environmental destruction we daily witness. If that is the case, then what might be (...) essential features of business institutions that would better serve humanity? What might be the role of a Theory of Community. And what might that mean for business education? This paper provides a broad framework for exploring those questions from a humanistic management perspective. It addresses the foundational issue of human purpose, describes the growing momentum for moving societies toward an ecological civilization, and notes the Earth Charter as a valuable source of ethical principles. Finally, it identifies the outcomes the formal institutions of an ecological civilization must serve and concludes with five design principles that these institutions will need to honor to support lives of diversity, beauty, creativity, and meaning for all. (shrink)

Written over a decade ago, Eva T. H. Brann's enlightening analysis of American education places the recent debate on the means and ends of a liberal education in new perspective. She goes beyond discussion of courses and particular books to claim that philosophical inquiry is far more important to the improvement of education than curricular and administrative schemes. She provides both a broad philosophical and historical analysis of education in any republic and specific, practical suggestions for achieving the education that (...) will serve as the best preparation for life in our own republic. (shrink)