What if Business is the Problem?

Of course, for me this is a rhetorical question. My whole work as an economist is predicated on my belief that business itself is the problem. But I work in a Management School that was formerly a business school and is still dedicated to producing young people to manage business. Our courses focus heavily on international corporate business culture and structure - although the vast majority of our students will not join these sorts of companies.

My research is supposed to be directed by the Association of Business Schools which produces a list of journals to which I am intended to aspire. Clearly, my work will not find favour, since it has at its heart a critique of business. Business has taken control of government and has now taken control of the universities as well. Universities once found their political space within a department dedicated to education; they now reside within the department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. So if business were the problem, it clearly would not be any of my business to identify this, or to study the reasons why for the sake of the public benefit. Well at least not in my day job.

So it did not surprise me to read that a report from Scientists for Global Responsibility has found that the objective scientific research we expect from our academics is being increasingly distorted by the priorities of the funders, either business itself, or government which, is dominated by business interests. Universities are also being encouraged to act like businesses. In my case, the Dean who was brought in to assure that this happened to our teaching and research has experience of neither himself, having spent his career as a civil servant at the Welsh Office. I have no idea what expertise he was supposed to bring to an institution focused on teaching and research.

As Stuart Parkinson, co-author of the report, comments, ´The trustworthiness of science and scientists is at stake.´The credibility of government is no longer worth defending, sadly. Although the report draws attention to the appointment of Lords Drayson and Sainsbury as consecutive science ministers, this is really the least of our problems.

As debate over climate change hots up with the approach to Copenhagen, the increasing polarity between profit and survival is felt as keenly in our research institutions as anywhere. When business is the most powerful player in our society, and its profit logic is the central cause of a destructive expansionist economy, how can we hope to develop ideas to counter this when are universities have already been subsumed into the government department dedicated to business support? Tweet

Public Service

My musings on the value of public goods were enhanced by a recent trip to Scotland. It is a noticeably more public-spirited country than England, whether you measure this in terms of public space, public transport or even public toilets. Ok, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland's wealthiest city, and it was beautiful weather, but the state of care for buildings and parks really struck home - not to mention the fact that everything was free.

I was in Edinburgh to see my son graduate, a delightful event which involved him being tapped over the head with a hat made from a pair of John Knox's trousers - as legend has it - and which took place in the McEwan Hall. I was planning to write a blog contrasting the continued commitment to erudition of Scotland's universities with the money-grubbing that has sadly tarnished by own Alma Mater where, if I were to study today, I would find myself in the Said Business School.

But of course the Mr. McEwan who funded the hall is the same man who is responsible for generations of drunken Glaswegians, just as Bristol University was funded by the Wills family who destroyed the lungs of several generations of working people. But am I too deluded to think that their attitude towards the university would have been one of deferential respect? And that this would be in stark contrast to Mr. Said, who probably condescended to donate his millions merely to buy some PR?

Since HE became swallowed up into the business brief (when we moved in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills which was later merged into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, making clear our key role as provider of creative thinkers for business), it has been clear that the government's view of universities is simply a training institution for corporations. Our role now is to teach 'academic skills for business' and the closer we are to an out-sourced training institution the happier are our paymasters. This is a disaster for our academic freedom, but also for the country. Since our research is now held within the straitjacket of business thinking, we cannot solve the problems of the world if those solutions might (and let's face it they usually do) result from the activities of said businesses. Tweet