Online MBA Forum

Monday, June 12, 2006

MBA Personalities

We tend to think that the "MBA mentality" is entirely a desireable quality, and in many ways it is. However, I've been reading some articles by Professor Abraham Zaleznik, a retired member of the Harvard Business School, who's career was about the pyschology of CEO leadership, and he sounds some warning notes.

He says that power is the aim of some CEOs, and that they lead by force of their personality. They pursuade others that they should do what he instructs them to do, and is sufficiently pursuasive that they suspend their own powers of reasoning in order to please the CEO.

The CEO may then perpetrate fraud or similar crimes, suspending his own conscience, and seeing these as "victimless crimes" because the shareholders - who sacrifice returns on their investments as a result of these actions - are faceless.

I'm fascinated by this, and am going to do some more research.

# posted by Mary @ 11:16 PM

Comments:

Absolutely! Some see being a CEO (or, in fact, manager of any kind) as part of this Alpha Male (although I guess we should also say Alpha Female these days) thing, the desire to be top of the heirarchy. It’s not just limited to those with an MBA, or even that MBA Mentality you talk of.

The terrible trouble everyone has with this is that we do indeed need the CEO to be that sort of commanding presence, so that they are able to guide people to the firm’s objectives. But we want them to get to that position by being able to guide people, not by being aggressive and cowing them.

It’s a real problem, one that few really have the solution to. How do we find those CEOs who deserve to be there, rather than those who have bullied their way up the totem pole?

# posted by failingeconomist : 8:26 AM

Online MBA Forum

Monday, June 12, 2006

MBA Personalities

Archives