THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL

by Peter Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 1973

They're the best and the brightest, the elite on a management team. A Harvard MBA -- like a Bigelow on the floor and a title on the door -- just about says it: prestige, influence, a key to the executive washroom, a watts line to the old-boy network (it's not surprising that 3000 applicants every year crowd the B School's door). What Cohen, who made it inside and kept a journal, found was a hermetic chamber and classmates with no illusions that the business of business is profits, wanting in on the take but lacking the imagination and the social responsiveness to understand its dehumanizing priorities. Rarely and only incidentally wasn't it business as usual, although three suicides, a peace march and a student strike had their effect; mostly it was day-by-day hassling to get through, tensions over connecting with the right job, chasing the bitch goddess that, like virtue, will be its own reward. ""I have to have some way of presenting myself,"" says a student, ""what you do is what you are. . . to do little is to be little. . . to do nothing is to be nothing."" How in the world, Cohen wonders, will the profits make up for the losses.

Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION