The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite

by Duff McDonald

Overview

From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Firm: “A massively detailed history of Harvard Business School . . . and a searing critique.” —Kirkus Reviews

With The Firm, financial journalist Duff McDonald pulled back the curtain on consulting giant McKinsey & Company. In The Golden Passport, he reveals the inner workings of a singular nexus of power, ambition, and influence: Harvard Business School.

Harvard University still occupies a unique place in the public’s imagination, but the Harvard Business School eclipsed its parent in terms of influence on modern society long ago. A Harvard degree guarantees respect. But a Harvard MBA near-guarantees entrance into Western capitalism’s most powerful realm—the corner office. And because the School shapes the way its powerful graduates think, its influence extends well beyond their own lives. It affects the organizations they command, and the economy they dominate.

In addition to teasing out the essence of this exclusive, if not necessarily “secret” club, McDonald explores two important questions: Has the school failed at reaching the goal it set for itself in 1908—”the multiplication of men who will handle their current business problems in socially constructive ways”? Is HBS complicit in the moral failings of Western capitalism?

At a time of soaring economic inequality and growing political unrest, this hard-hitting yet fair portrait offers a much-needed look at a profoundly influential institution.

“Exploring how Harvard Business School became a ticket to the highest echelons of money, power, and influence, McDonald chronicles the school’s history in an irreverent, cynical, and frequently funny exposé of its pretensions.”—Publishers Weekly

“Impressively researched . . . I suspect McDonald won’t be invited to campus anytime soon, but perhaps he should be: Agree with him or not, he deserves credit for raising questions that every business school needs to be asking.” —The New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062347183
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	620
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Duff McDonald is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase, and The Golden Passport and the coauthor of The CEO, a satire. A contributing editor at the New York Observer, he has also written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York, Esquire, Fortune, Businessweek, GQ, Wired, Time, Newsweek, and other publications. He lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Experimenters: Charles Eliot and Abbott Lawrence Lowell 11

2 A Search for Mission and Method: Edwin Gay 21

3 The "Scientist": Frederick W. Taylor 30

4 The First Decade: 1910-1919 42

5 The Case for the Case Method 46

6 The Idealist: Wallace Brett Donham 54

7 The Benefactors: George Baker, Sr. and Jr 66

8 Doctor Who?: Elton Mayo 76

9 A Decade in Review: 1920-1929 91

10 The First Broadside: Abraham Flexner 97

11 Friends in High Places 101

12 The Marriage of Moral Authority and Managerial Control 111

13 The Venture Capitalist: Georges Doriot 120

14 A Decade in Review: 1930-1939 130

15 The West Point of Capitalism 135

16 The Darling of the Business Elite: Donald David 140

17 From the "Retreads" to the Crème de la Crème 147

18 Temporary Support of the Workingman 160

19 The Class the Dollars Fell On: The '49ers 167

20 A Decade in Review: 1940-1949 175

21 Organization Man and the Corporate Cocoon 182

22 The Power Elite 188

23 The Hidden Hand 199

24 The Specialists: Robert Schlaifer and Howard Raiffa 213

25 The Philanthropist: Henry Ford II 219

26 Spreading the Gospel 227

27 Gentlemen (and a Few Ladies) 237

28 The Legitimizer: Alfred Chandler 243

29 A Decade in Review: 1950-1959 253

30 Peak Influence 257

31 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 264

32 The Case Against the Case Method 277

33 A Decade in Review: 1960-1969 285

34 The Myth of the Well-Educated Manager 290

35 Harvard Business Review: Origins, Heyday, and Scandal 293

36 Can Leaders Be Manufactured? 308

37 Can Entrepreneurship Be Learned? 319

38 The Second Broadside: Derek Bok 334

39 Managing Our Way to Economic Decline 342

40 A Decade in Review: 1970-1979 353

41 The Subversive Nature of a Social Conscience 360

42 The Murder of Managerialism 365

43 Managerialism Was Already Dead 384

44 The Kindergarten Class Play 392

45 Monetizing It 400

46 The Monopolist: Michael Porter 411

47 Self-Interest, with a Side Dish of Ethics 428

48 Life Out of Balance 442

49 A Decade in Review: 1980-1989 453

50 The Money Mill 465

51 The Thorn in Their Side 483

52 A Decade in Review: 1990-1999 490

53 The Microsoft of Business Schools 500

54 The Men Who Would Be President 503

55 The Shame: Jeff Skilling 512

56 The High Art of Self-Congratulation 525

57 The Loyalty Program 530

58 The CEO Pay Gap 538

59 A Decade in Review: 2000-2009 545

60 The Next Generation 554

61 Nitin Nohria for President 564

Epilogue: Can HBS Lead the Way Forward? 575

Author's Note 579

Notes 583

Index 627

Editorial Reviews

I suspect McDonald won't be invited to campus anytime soon, but perhaps he should be: Agree with him or not, he deserves credit for raising questions that every business school needs to be asking. It's hard to quarrel with his concluding plea: "H.B.S. should—and can—play a part in helping more people who think about business rediscover a purpose other than profit."

The New York Times Book Review - James B. Stewart

01/30/2017
Exploring how Harvard Business School became a ticket to the highest echelons of money, power, and influence, McDonald (The Firm) chronicles the school’s history in an irreverent, cynical, and frequently funny exposé of its pretensions. He begins by describing the school’s founding in 1908 to, in one professor’s words, raise “the oldest of the arts” into the “youngest of the professions.” Despite these high-minded words, McDonald explains that HBS was launched largely to provide a credential for business-destined blue bloods who required the prestige of a Harvard degree. HBS eventually matured, but McDonald deftly skewers the vacuity at the core of the MBA curriculum, lamenting “how many members of a highly intelligent faculty have to resort to bold claims of discovering that which we already knew.” He also questions why the school doesn’t do more to shape the ethics of business, devoting chapters to ignominious graduates like Jeffrey Skilling of Enron and to the growing gap between the pay of ordinary workers and CEOs. This institutional history refreshingly substitutes skepticism for reverence, questioning the limits of business education and of capitalism in general. Agent: David Kuhn, Kuhn Projects. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] richly reported indictment of the school as a leading reason that corporate America is disdained by much of the country....in example after example, Mr. McDonald sets out his thesis that money and influence have distorted both the school’s curriculum and the worldview espoused by its professors.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times

“This is serious history, broad in its sweep and meticulous in the detail.” — Wall Street Journal

“Duff McDonald’s The Golden Passport is the detailed story of Harvard Business School (HBS) that, willingly marinated in corporate money and influence, prepares each generation of “modern” corporate tycoons. HBS, while alert to shaping the latest management techniques, is largely indifferent to the ongoing corporate crime wave and other criminogenic behavior and externalities corrosive of fundamental civic values and economic equities. Readers can bury their noses in this prodigious tome and come away with a stench of affluent decadence.” — Ralph Nader

“The Golden Passport is a tour-de-force about one of our nation’s most important and enduring symbols of capitalism. Whether you aspire to attend Harvard Business School or you disdain it for its disproportionate influence on Wall Street and in the executive suites of our major corporations, McDonald’s investigative-reporting masterpiece is a must read.” — William D. Cohan, New York Times bestselling author of House of Cards

“The Golden Passport isn’t the first (and won’t be the last) time that pointed criticism has been aimed at the Harvard Business School, but it is certainly the most thorough to date. The story McDonald tells isn’t a simplistic one. Rather, he argues that the analytical modus operandi of Harvard-trained MBAs has damaged not just particular companies, but the very fabric of society itself. It’s a convincing and important call for change.” — Bethany McLean, co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room

Duff McDonald’s Golden Passport is a magisterial history of Harvard Business School and much more. It provides a powerful lens into the intellectual underpinnings and pragmatic failures of American business and American capitalism writ large. — Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

“Exploring how Harvard Business School became a ticket to the highest echelons of money, power, and influence, McDonald (The Firm) chronicles the school’s history in an irreverent, cynical, and frequently funny exposé of its pretensions...refreshingly substitutes skepticism for reverence, questioning the limits of business education and of capitalism in general.” — Publishers Weekly

“A massively detailed history of Harvard Business School since its founding in 1908 and a searing critique of the school’s impact on American capitalism…..McDonald’s deep research into the 100-plus years of HBS-the faculty members, the courses offered, many of the students-is undoubtedly impressive.” — Kirkus Reviews

“McDonald’s reporting highlights the school’s influence, such as detailing how HBS helped the U.S. win WWII by marrying mathematics and statistics to war strategy, and also how HBS helped define and establish the foundations of managerial knowledge in the country and put American management at the forefront of global business. ” — Booklist

“Exploring how Harvard Business School became a ticket to the highest echelons of money, power, and influence, McDonald (The Firm) chronicles the school’s history in an irreverent, cynical, and frequently funny exposé of its pretensions...refreshingly substitutes skepticism for reverence, questioning the limits of business education and of capitalism in general.” —

From the Publisher

Duff McDonald’s Golden Passport is a magisterial history of Harvard Business School and much more. It provides a powerful lens into the intellectual underpinnings and pragmatic failures of American business and American capitalism writ large.

Richard Florida

Duff McDonald’s The Golden Passport is the detailed story of Harvard Business School (HBS) that, willingly marinated in corporate money and influence, prepares each generation of “modern” corporate tycoons. HBS, while alert to shaping the latest management techniques, is largely indifferent to the ongoing corporate crime wave and other criminogenic behavior and externalities corrosive of fundamental civic values and economic equities. Readers can bury their noses in this prodigious tome and come away with a stench of affluent decadence.

Ralph Nader

The Golden Passport isn’t the first (and won’t be the last) time that pointed criticism has been aimed at the Harvard Business School, but it is certainly the most thorough to date. The story McDonald tells isn’t a simplistic one. Rather, he argues that the analytical modus operandi of Harvard-trained MBAs has damaged not just particular companies, but the very fabric of society itself. It’s a convincing and important call for change.

Bethany McLean

McDonald’s reporting highlights the school’s influence, such as detailing how HBS helped the U.S. win WWII by marrying mathematics and statistics to war strategy, and also how HBS helped define and establish the foundations of managerial knowledge in the country and put American management at the forefront of global business.

Booklist

The Golden Passport is a tour-de-force about one of our nation’s most important and enduring symbols of capitalism. Whether you aspire to attend Harvard Business School or you disdain it for its disproportionate influence on Wall Street and in the executive suites of our major corporations, McDonald’s investigative-reporting masterpiece is a must read.

William D. Cohan

[A] richly reported indictment of the school as a leading reason that corporate America is disdained by much of the country....in example after example, Mr. McDonald sets out his thesis that money and influence have distorted both the school’s curriculum and the worldview espoused by its professors.

Andrew Ross Sorkin

This is serious history, broad in its sweep and meticulous in the detail.

Wall Street Journal

This is serious history, broad in its sweep and meticulous in the detail.

Wall Street Journal

McDonald’s reporting highlights the school’s influence, such as detailing how HBS helped the U.S. win WWII by marrying mathematics and statistics to war strategy, and also how HBS helped define and establish the foundations of managerial knowledge in the country and put American management at the forefront of global business.

Booklist

In McDonald’s hands this history of the Harvard Business School, its successes and failures, misdeeds and misapprehensions, becomes a window into the increasingly corrupted soul of mercantile America.

The Globe and Mail

2017-02-07
A massively detailed history of Harvard Business School since its founding in 1908 and a searing critique of the school's impact on American capitalism.Upon beginning the "thirty-month odyssey" of researching his latest book, New York Observer contributing editor McDonald (The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, 2014, etc.) realized that it constituted the third in a trilogy of sorts, following The Firm and, before that, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase (2009). In The Firm, the author included a section about the connections between the legendary consulting firm and the Harvard MBA program, a section titled "McHarvard." McDonald's deep research into the 100-plus years of HBS—the faculty members, the courses offered, many of the students—is undoubtedly impressive. However, the decade-by-decade sections of the history often drag, featuring facts and anecdotes most likely to interest only faculty and students. When McDonald broadens his focus to examine the impact of HBS outside the campus, the book becomes more relevant to general readers. The author concludes that while HBS has always possessed the ability to improve business practices in the United States and around the globe, most faculty members have failed to imbue most of their MBA students with the values needed to make true improvements or innovations a reality. McDonald hoped to share his impressions with HBS administrators and active faculty, but he reports that he received rejections from nearly everyone he approached. Throughout his critique, the author emphasizes the unwillingness within the MBA program to delve into the responsible roles of businesses other than earning as much money as possible. As McDonald rightly notes, deep investigations into the economic inequality spawned by the current capitalist system are egregiously missing from the Harvard MBA curriculum. A tome that alternates between a useful exposé and a slog—best for HBS alumni and business historians.

Kirkus Reviews