Watching the Crisis from B-School

"If the business world is changing, there is no better time to be where I am in this educational endeavor"

By Linda Craib

Related Items

• Starting at Yale
• Anticipating Yale
• A New Life Where Math Is Fun
• Statistically Blonde
• B-School Through a Math Lens

Linda Craib
Health Care Executive MBA Program
Class of 2010
Yale School of Management

Story Tools

• post a comment
• e-mail this story
• print this story
• order a reprint
• suggest a story
• digg this
• save to del.icio.us

They say that even the gods fear the fates. As the agents of destiny would have it, the collapse of the financial markets coincided with my first semester of business school. When the planets aligned in what Alan Greenspan described as a "once in a century" crisis, the topsy-turvy world I was trying so hard to navigate tried to right itself through seismic shifts, aftershocks, and revelations. The economic principles about the free market that made so much sense mapped out with graph paper, colored pencils, and mathematical equations this past summer evaporated into a cloud of uncertainty. Perhaps, as Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz stated in his 2006 book, Making Globalization Work, "the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there."

As a mere business school mortal, I take some solace in the fact that I'm watching such disconcerting events from the sidelines. If the business world is changing, there is no better time to be where I am in this educational endeavor. More than a year ago, I described my wish to see mathematics beyond mere computation—the old adage to "watch out what you wish for" now rings true. After nearly a full semester studying financial theories, valuation, risk assessment, statistics, and probability modeling, the business world has revealed itself to be a masquerade.

It's hard to know what is real when so many corporate and individual scions of business are wearing Charles Ponzi masks.

Appropriate Syllabus

My foundation class in State & Society, a study of management's response to the juxtaposition of law, business, and society, couldn't have come at a better time. As outlined in part on our syllabus, "effective managers don't just consider what they can do, but also what they should [do]." Our class discussion has been informed by front-page news, the U.S. presidential election, and case studies concerning such issues as Merck and the Vioxx litigation, Bechtel Corp. and the privatization of water supplies in Bolivia, and the Rise and Fall of Enron.

We read Hernando DeSoto's book, Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, and three members of our class attended a debate among DeSoto, Joseph Steiglitz, and Naomi Klein at the Graduate Center at CUNY in Manhattan. We had breakfast with a former Enron executive who quit his position when attempts to bring corporate wrongdoing fell on the deaf ears of Ken Lay years before the company collapsed. Importantly, both inside and outside the classroom, we considered, argued, and internalized divergent and sometimes competing points of view about capitalism and its convergence with individual and corporate responsibility in the health-care sector.

If the business of the financial markets seemed disconcerting these past few months, then (at least from an insider's perspective) the parallels in the business of health care could be considered downright frightening. With the industry on its own precipice, business decisions often involve scalpel-sharp cuts that invariably have to consider the bottom line; choices can literally have life or death consequences for patient "investors." Care is bundled, marketed, and sold as a commodity with trust and risk all wrapped into a nice neat portfolio. Like understanding those pesky derivatives in the financial markets, many individuals simply don't comprehend the complexity of their "investment" when it comes to health care. Patients rely on the principled conduct of health-care leadership (business executives, scientists, administrators, doctors, and nurses alike) to protect their physical and emotional well-being.

Heads in the Sand

The financial debacle has shown that we cannot continue with business as usual. With a public demanding accountability for business decisions across all sectors, there can be no more excuses for looking the other way when unsafe, illegal, or unethical behavior is at play.

With business and health care both at a crossroads, I am thankful for that year I delayed starting my MBA in order to shore up my quantitative skills; I'm also thankful for my health-care background in this economy. As Philip Delves Broughton wrote in his book, Ahead of the Curve, a degree from an Ivy League business school does not necessarily guarantee a job (or even a good experience for that matter). Despite the economy, I continue to feel confident about the Yale brand and hope that employers will be seeking out the graduates of my program. With statistics on post-graduation job offers a long-standing measure of the success and perceived value of a traditional MBA from a particular school, it can be difficult to ascertain the "success" of an executive program when some graduates are sponsored by employers and remain with those same employers upon graduation.

It will be interesting to see how the graduates from the EMBA class of 2009 fare in this new world of business and health care at this particular moment in history. Of particular concern to me will be the success of (as well as the perceived barriers for) those graduates trying to make midcareer transitions into different sectors of the health-care industry. I'll be watching closely and look forward to writing about my own experience in this regard in the months to come.

The stoic philosopher Epictetus once said, "First say to yourself what you would be; then do what you have to do." If the culture and values imbued in the microcosm of a business school carry over to the real world, then where business leaders are taught, and by whom, truly matter. With a commitment to business ethics and collaboration long woven into the matrix of the curriculum and the school culture, I'm finishing up my first semester with a new-found confidence that Yale was the right choice for me. As my education continues to shape my values, my aspirations, and the fabric of who I am, I can't help but remain excited about the path that lies before me.

Craib is an MBA Journal writer and member of the Class of 2010 for the Yale School of Management Health Care Executive MBA program.