To the Editor:

In "How Two National Reports Ruined Business Schools" (The Chronicle, November 8), Carter Daniel argues that the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation reports from 50 years ago caused a near catastrophe in business education by forcing the schools to retreat into what he calls the theoretical camp. As a proud recipient of an M.B.A. following those reports, I suggest that business education is, if anything, too antitheoretical. Perhaps in response to the reports, there appears to have been something of a tack toward mainstream economics by adopting the untested assumption of profit maximization. However, that carried at least three problems.

First, as a scientific discipline, economics is deeply troubled. We can see that most dramatically by the failure of all but a handful of economists to predict recent economic developments. Second, beyond the fact that the profit-maximization doctrine frees business managers from moral responsibility, it is nearly useless as a guide for specific decisions. Third, once profit maximization is accepted, business schools become mere training programs in the latest tactics.

Since the complex intellectual difficulties involved in theoretical learning could be evaded, there was extensive vertical integration of business programs to the undergraduate level. By way of contrast, when medical education responded to the 1910 Flexner Report (also supported by the Carnegie Corporation), it tacked toward theory purposefully and abandoned undergraduate programs in medicine. More critical attention to theory might have led business professors to turn their attention to the development of sophisticated theories of management.

Finally, as with many other business educators, Mr. Daniel wants to associate business schools with what he terms "other professional schools." However, business schools are not professional schools for the simple reason that business management—at least as it is taught and practiced currently—is not a profession. There are neither knowledge-based nor ethical professional standards, as is the case for genuine professions. Developing such standards would very likely take us back to theory. If there were articulated theoretical foundations for business management beyond maximizing self-interest, business managers might become professionals and business schools might become professional schools.

Willard F. Enteman
Providence, R.I.

The writer, a former professor of philosophy, is also a former president of Bowdoin College.