CHAPTER 1

Management as a Liberal Art

Karen E. Linkletter and Joseph A. Maciariello

We do not know yet precisely how to link the liberal arts and management. We donot know yet what impact this linkage will have on either party—andmarriages, even bad ones, always change both partners.

—Peter F. Drucker"Teaching the Work of Management," New Management

News headlines in late 2008 and early 2009 screamed evidence of the public'sdisenchantment with corporate America. Protestors repeatedly gathered on WallStreet, voicing disgust with the government bailout of the financial sector. AIGexecutives reportedly received death threats after the firm's bonus payoutsbecame public. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched an investigationinto Merrill Lynch's accelerated payment of employee bonuses prior to its mergerwith Bank of America. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, along with fellowCEOs Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Alan Mulally of Ford, flew to Washington inprivate jets to plead for taxpayer money to rescue the automobile industry,leading many pundits to note how "out of touch with the real world" corporateAmerica had become.

From bloated salaries and unwarranted bonus payments to outright swindles likethat of Bernie Madoff, the public image of American business has taken a beatingin recent months. Fueling this populist ire is a sense that corporations havelost their moral compass; who wants to help a bully that doesn't play by therules? It seems that something is drastically amiss in the boardrooms ofAmerica. Do we have the wrong people leading our organizations? Have they beentrained poorly? Or is it simply, as many have argued, that our brand ofcapitalism breeds greed and lust for power?

Peter Drucker had a great deal to say about the role of power in organizations,as well as the selection and training of effective executives. But his mostpressing concern was that organizations direct their attention to people;organizations must provide human beings with status, function, and a sense ofcommunity and purpose. Viewed in this context, the management of people withinorganizations involves an understanding of human nature and cultural or communalvalues and morals—in Drucker's words, with questions of "good and evil."Although most businesses have some sort of ethics code in their missionstatements, matters of good and evil are perceived as being best left to therealm of theology or philosophy—not the boardroom. Yet Drucker insisted onthe need for values in organizations. This is clear not only in his written workbut also was evidenced by his teaching style and philosophy, as both of uswitnessed in our years of working with him. And, given the state of business'simage in the public's eyes, perhaps it would help to at least raise thequestion: What do managers and executives value and why? If organizations areabout human beings, from where do those human beings derive their values?

One way to begin to address this subject is to take seriously Drucker'sstatement that management is a liberal art. Although he never fully defined thisconcept, it is clear that he envisioned a linkage between the liberal artstradition inherited from Greek and Roman civilizations and the pragmatic, day-to-dayoperations of an organization. One crucial element that links the liberalarts and management is the fostering and maintenance of cultural values.Historically, liberal arts training emphasized the cultivation of beliefs,behaviors, and opinions that were thought by a given civilization to be of highmoral quality (good or right). If management is, as Drucker said, a liberal art,then it must similarly involve the development of shared codes of conduct andbeliefs within an organization. The practical implications of management as aliberal art for today's organizations are far-reaching, and may indeed provide anew blueprint for redeeming corporate America's reputation.

The Liberal Arts: A Historical Tradition

The concept of the liberal arts, from which the term liberal art stems,has a long history. Although the concept originated with the Greeks, the Romans,notably Cicero, used the Latin term artes liberales beginning around thefirst century B.C.E. The definition of a liberal art was a skill or craftpracticed by a free citizen who had the time and means for study; in itsclassical sense, education in the liberal arts was meant for the elite, rulingclasses of society. Liberal arts training, then, meant training citizens to besociety's leaders. Therefore, the ideals of an artes liberales educationwere to instill standards of conduct and character, knowledge/mastery of a bodyof texts, a respect for societal values and standards, and an appreciation forknowledge and truth. As the Roman Empire collapsed, the Church incorporated theclassical ideals and curriculum of the liberal arts into Christian education,infusing the old artes liberales with a new religious mission.

As centers of learning were established at the great universities throughoutEurope, and as the ideals of the Renaissance began to seep into thoseinstitutions, the curriculum of liberal arts training changed, but the emphasison the values of antiquity and the transmission of moral values in order torefine the human being remained. The models of higher education developed atCambridge and Oxford were virtually transplanted to the American colonies asprimarily Protestant denominational colleges, such as Harvard (1636), Williamand Mary (1693), and Yale (1701). As in England and Europe, these early collegeseducated an elite corps of young men in classical literature (in their originalGreek and Latin), as well as the Bible, in order to develop their moralcharacter and their suitability for further studies in law, medicine, or theministry.

Changing attitudes and increasing industrialization fueled a call for aneducational curriculum that was accessible to a broader segment of the publicand suitable for the practical needs of an expanding economy. The Morrill Act of1862 provided federal funding to colleges that taught agriculture and vocationalsubjects, reflecting this revised definition of what constituted appropriatesubject matter for institutions of higher learning. The model of the Germanresearch university, where scholarly production had replaced teaching as thesource of academic prestige and income, laid the groundwork for the new Americanuniversities, such as Johns Hopkins (1876). In response to the growing demandfor more pragmatic training, several of the liberal arts colleges establishedthe first graduate schools of business.

Yet even within these new professional MBA degree schools, there was anassumption that incoming students would have received a liberal arts education;Dartmouth's Tuck School of Administration and Finance (1900), Harvard BusinessSchool (1908), and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (1921) allrequired either an undergraduate degree or a course of undergraduate studyconcurrent with business training. The reason for requiring a liberal artseducation as a precursor to business studies was to provide a moral foundationfor young people: training in religious and classical values and virtues.

The concept of the liberal arts, and by extension "management as a liberal art,"must therefore involve a foundation in values, virtues, and character formation.An important point, however, is that there was never a single, agreed-uponcurriculum or standard set of disciplines that constituted a liberal artseducation. The Church significantly modified the pagan Greco-Roman artesliberales tradition, emphasizing those disciplines (language, grammar, andhistory) that would allow for the study of scripture. Liberal arts trainingchanged again and again to accommodate new information and outlooks. When newtranslations of Aristotle's texts and other philosophical works became availablein the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, logic was more highly valued as theroute to knowledge of "the good." The new humanism of the Renaissance, whichalso embraced classical texts, injected a focus on the worldly realm; liberalarts education aimed to prepare one for a moral life on earth, not just thestudy of scripture. The tension between "learning for learning's sake" andlearning as preparation for a productive life remains today. There has neverbeen, nor is there now, a uniform course of study that constitutes a liberalarts education.

What is constant, however, is the attempt to inculcate a set ofagreed-upon values, or cultural beliefs. The values and beliefs change overtime, but the overarching goal does not. Ultimately, the artes liberalesand their various iterations strive to define what is good, right, and just in agiven society or culture. As the tradition has shifted its context from pagan toChristian to today's secular society, the ideal of instilling shared valuesremains, but has become increasingly complex. In a diverse society, whatconstitutes "right" and "good"? Who or what defines them? Where one locatesthese values is an important question. To wrestle with this question is towrestle with the legitimacy and universality of certain values. Ultimately, itinvolves addressing larger theological or philosophical issues: Drucker'sconcern with "good and evil." Such big-picture questions are not confined to theivory tower; the overwhelming success of Rick Warren's book The PurposeDriven Life indicates that there is a global search for answers to some oflife's most important questions, such as, "Why am I here?" and, "What is mypurpose?" Instilling a liberal arts mentality, then, involves an ever-shiftingsearch for the best way to foster values based on tradition, even though thattradition may morph over time. It is to take seriously the counsel of Socratesto examine one's life, for "the unexamined life is not worth living."

Today, the artes liberales are widely proclaimed to be irrelevant toAmerican society and education. The past goals of liberal arts training seemelitist, culturally insensitive, and totally impractical for today's cadre ofup-and-coming executives and professionals, not to mention midlevel managers orentrepreneurs. Liberal arts colleges have radically revamped their curriculum,entrance requirements, and attitude to try to survive, economically as much asculturally. Yet there is much evidence to support the view that the erosion ofthe liberal arts is in part responsible for our current climate of greed andprofit at any cost. In his recent book, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands,Rakesh Khurana argues that the business schools' recent emphasis on maximizationof shareholder value as the sole measure of organizational success has demotedprofessional managers to nothing more than "hired hands." With noresponsibilities to anything other than themselves, these hired guns lack anysense of a greater moral, social, or ethical obligation to society or theorganizations that employ them.

In Management, Revised Edition, Peter Drucker, a thinker who was alwaysahead of his time, called management a liberal art:

Management is thus what tradition used to call a liberal art: "liberal"because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self knowledge, wisdom, andleadership; "art" because it is practice and application. Managers [should] drawon all the knowledge and insights of the humanities and the socialsciences—on psychology and philosophy, on economics and history, on ethicsas well as on the physical sciences. But they have to focus this knowledge oneffectiveness and results—on healing a sick patient, teaching a student,building a bridge, designing and selling a "user friendly" software program.

Drucker believed that management would be the key to keeping the liberal artssentiment alive in today's society. He saw an important relationship between thetwo forms of training. The liberal arts can bring "wisdom" and "self-knowledge"to the practice of management, while management can "be the discipline and thepractice through and in which the 'humanities' will again acquire recognition,impact, and relevance." And practicing management as a liberal art might, infact, return management to its original, intended professional status.

Applying Management as a Liberal Art for Today's Executives

If Peter Drucker was right about management being a liberal art, management mustreturn to the original ideals of liberal arts education that were fundamental tothe concept of professionalism in business and to Drucker's concept of "theeducated person." The difficulty in implementing management as a liberal artlies in the perceived dichotomy between the "ivory tower" of academia and the"real world" of business. As we've shown, the history of the liberal artstradition involved training for the "real world" of politics, law, medicine, andreligious leadership. Furthermore, reconciling the classical artesliberales with the everyday world has a long tradition in America. ThePuritans established an extremely intellectual society with one of the highestliteracy rates in the western world. Harvard College's primary mission was totrain ministers in a liberal arts curriculum. But the college also matriculatedgrammar school teachers and government leaders, fulfilling its mission ofinstilling cherished values and traditions throughout the Massachusetts Baycommunity. The Puritans were also remarkably successful in the material realm;historian Stephen Innes has argued that the Puritans' brand of Calvinismpropelled their economic development. The Founding Fathers, too, embracedliberal arts ideals in their concept of "republican virtue," believing that arepublic would survive only if its leaders understood the importance of societalvalues and the concept of a common good. Education was considered essential tosound governance of a free society. Thomas Jefferson founded the University ofVirginia not only to "develop the reasoning faculties of our youth," but also"to harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture, manufactures andcommerce."

The connection between the goals of the liberal arts and those of practicingprofessionals may have been lost, but it can be restored. In Drucker's view,it was the liberal arts' responsibility to "demonstrate and to embody values, tocreate vision ... [and] to lead." Management as a liberal art, then, wouldrequire practitioners to do the same.

Peter Drucker codified management both as a discipline and as a professionembodying both technê, which he referred to as specialized knowledge ortechnology, and practice, which he referred to as art. "Practice" is the art ofintegrating and harmonizing the various specialized bodies of knowledge so thatthe energy turned out by the organization is greater than the sum of theindividual contributions.

And, as Drucker states in The Practice of Management, "To get more thanis being put in is only possible in the moral sphere." Consequently, thepractice of integrity in the management group, and especially in top management,is the cornerstone of management. Executives are exemplars, and their practicesset examples for others to follow. Their practices determine the esprit de corpsof the organization (i.e., what Drucker refers to as the spirit of theorganization). And for the esprit de corps in an organization to be high,integrity must permeate management practices.

In his work Orators and Philosophers, Bruce Kimball argues that liberalarts education has historically involved a tension between those who believethat such an education should have as its end the pursuit of truth (thephilosophers) and those who believe that it should allow people to befunctioning members of society (the orators). Management as a liberal art wouldeffectively blend the two models, requiring not only that professionals functionas effective managers, but also that they embody larger values that supersedethe mundane, day-to-day operations of the organization. Drucker showed a clearpreference for executives who possess integrity and good moral judgment overexecutives who are more intellectually gifted but who lack integrity. The heartof the rationale for this preference is his passion for the growth anddevelopment of the individual:

A man might himself know too little, perform poorly, lack judgment andability, and yet not do too much damage as a manager. But if he lacks incharacter and integrity—no matter how knowledgeable, how brilliant, howsuccessful—he destroys. He destroys people, the most valuable resource ofthe enterprise. He destroys spirit. And he destroys performance.

The practice of management as a liberal art thus involves not only the abilityto apply knowledge in the material world, but also a constant reference tohigher sources of moral reference.

One of the legacies of business school training in agency theory and managerialreliance on financial models as the sole measure of performance is the absenceof any such moral reference. Executives today are not provided with a moralcompass by the market system. The market is blind to both good and evil and isthus capable of producing both great good and great evil. Without a moralreference point, executives are unlikely to act in a responsible manner towardtheir own people, toward their customers, or toward the public. They areespecially unlikely to develop the potential of their own people. We are seeingthis now (April 2009) as workers by the millions are being displaced andconfidence in our nation's financial and regulatory institutions has eroded. Itis not too harsh to proclaim that the public is losing confidence in managementas a profession.

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