Higher Education and Business StandardsHotchkiss, Willard E. (Willard Eugene)
Philosophy
Higher Education and Business Standards
Hotchkiss, Willard E. (Willard Eugene)
Business education; Business ethics
In the actual case before us, the child was after quick and easy
results, the only kind she could comprehend; she was unable to look
upon the garden as a living thing whose life and health must be
preserved to-day in order that it may yield returns to-morrow and next
week. Analyzed with adult understanding, her essential fault was a
failure to get beyond immediate results and to view the garden from a
long-time angle. We ought not to expect her to do this now, but we do
expect her to do it when she is grown up. We expect in time so to
educate her that she will be able to think of the garden in terms of
permanence and growth and to make an effective use of it from that
standpoint; and this same education in long-time effectiveness is what
we want in business.
Business standards must be discussed from the standpoint of efficiency,
but efficiency needs to be interpreted. We may as well admit at the
start that the efficiency ideal is not entirely in good repute at this
moment.[1] If I may import an expression from England, we have been
somewhat "fed up" with efficiency during the recent past and the ration
has been rather too much for our digestion.
[1] At the time this was written, in the spring of 1916, it will
be recalled, the German war machine for nearly two years had been
demonstrating its efficiency; the Allies had not yet matched it,
and we did not like the work that efficiency was doing.
Away back in the eighties, before the dominance of business in American
society had been questioned, efficiency, as the term was then
understood, had a place among the elect; it was the intimate associate
of business success. Then came the muck-raker, and with him came also
anti-trust cases and insurance investigations. We turned our attention
to labor outbreaks, to graft prosecutions, and to land steals. We
talked about "malefactors of great wealth." We even became interested
in Schedule K. And so, during the first decade of the new century a
whole train of revelations, incidents, and phrases tempered our regard
for business and brought many business practices under the ban of law
and hostile sentiment. Efficiency was in bad company and suffered in
reputation.
But efficiency was able to prove an alibi; we were told that the thing
which posed as efficiency was not efficiency, but special privilege,
and we were again persuaded of the great service a regenerate and
socialized efficiency could render. Just at this point came the
outbreak in Europe; efficiency was again caught in bad company, and we
began to hear such phrases as the "moral breakdown of efficiency,"
"efficiency, a false ideal," and others of similar import. In an
article bearing the title, "Moral Breakdown of Efficiency," published
in the "Century" for June, 1915, it was maintained that pursuit of
efficiency had led and was still leading civilization on a downward
path.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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