Business students could profit from learning compassion

“The main goal of every organization is to make money; it doesn’t matter if it’s a nonprofit… “The main goal of every organization is to make money; it doesn’t matter if it’s a nonprofit one or a for-profit one. The main goal is profit.”

What was I hearing? I looked around, and nobody else seemed to be listening to the same lecture. Nobody was shocked and surprised — nobody else seemed to find anything wrong with the statement. I raised my hand and asked the professor if I had heard him correctly. I had.

Welcome back to school, College of Business Administration-style.

I’ve heard my fair share of bull-malarkey, but it seems like it gets worse and worse each semester, like they’ve been working us up to this. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve become more sensitive to it every semester.

Last semester, we did an entire unit in Operations Management about “location strategies.” There were plenty of questions like “If you can pay a Chinese laborer one-tenth of the wage of an American worker, and they produce one-third the output at half the quality, how much profit are you making by moving abroad?”

But the textbooks never quite put it exactly like that. The textbooks and the tests are all in terms of numbers, cold and calculated: a certain value for environment — lower standards equal higher ratings; a certain value for wage rate; and a certain value for productivity. Then it’s all figured into a rubric and computed for optimum profitability, disregarding all else.

I learned in another of my marketing classes that advertisers are becoming frustrated with the limited reach of traditional media. Corporations are renting spaces on the sides of civilian cars, leasing sidewalks from municipalities, placing ads in our elevators and popping more and more product placements into our movies.

There is even a company in Connecticut that is paying students $250 a week to wear temporary tattoos of corporate logos on their foreheads. The students on either side of me took notes, as if remembering to use this at some future time.

Something in my stomach churned.

In another class, we watched a video in which an Indian woman from a shantytown proudly proclaimed that her family has a color television, a status symbol in their poor neighborhood. She contentedly stated that she makes the payments on the television every month on time, even if it means that she might not have vegetables that week.

My head began to hurt.

I’m not trying to paint a negative picture of the business school or profess any antagonism toward marketing and capitalism. A lot of my professors are great, and there are some that I will never forget who have taught me invaluable skills. Professor Gilbert once said — perhaps the only time I heard it in the business school — “Do the right thing, because anything else just isn’t worth it.” It was a breath of fresh air.

But a lot of questionable things are being slipped in under the radar, and it amazes me that in all these instances I was the only person to raise my hand and question the professor. Perhaps it is that no one else is impressed because they’ve seen it all before. That’s possible, but I’ve seen it before, too. But those things I heard in the video about India still shake me up.

I know this is the business school, and I’m not expecting the professors to preach to me about living your life for others, but it would be nice to have a healthy dose of “Here are the benefits of not outsourcing all your labor,” “Here is how being environmentally friendly or socially conscious can contribute to your objectives,” and “Here are the benefits to be had other than profit, like creating a favorable name for your company or being able to sleep well at night.”

You might be reading this thinking, “What can I do?” The answer is really simple: Raise your hand and question what you are being taught. Question the logic, question the motive and question the fundamental assumptions. Bring up another point.

If something doesn’t feel right, speak up. College is about thinking for yourself and learning and growing. Besides, the professor can’t think of everything — they might actually be glad you brought up that point.

No matter what field you are studying — business, history, physics or engineering — “Why?” should never be a dumb question.

E-mail Dan Masny at dmasney@gmail.com.