From Hybrid SUVs to Hybrid MBAs

All the world loves greener, more socially-responsible hybrids.

Now Harvard Business School is following an emerging trend among graduate schools of offering a hybrid degree incorporating parts of an MBA with a public affairs degree--to prepare students for careers in the ever-overlapping private, public, and nonprofit sectors. The Harvard degree will launch in 2008.

The Fletcher School at Tufts earlier launched its Master of International Business (MIB) as another public-private-nonprofit degree:

"How is the Fletcher MIB different from an MBA?

The Fletcher MIB is a hybrid international business/international relations degree. It was founded on the principle that business professionals today must be well-versed not only in business management and strategy but also the complex reality of external governmental, legal, social, and environmental factors that influence business."

Johns Hopkins SAIS and University of Pennsylvania Wharton School have for 20 years offered a dual MA-MBA degree to prepare students "to lead in today’s globalized environment, in which both managerial acumen and international comprehension are essential, and in which knowledge of both business and public policy are vital for success."

The premise behind these initiatives is that the world's problems encompass all sectors. Harvard's Kennedy School Dean David Ellwood put it this way:

"Every interesting public problem in the world today crosses the boundary between business and government. Frankly, I think that for too long there have not been enough connections."

Greenpeace Going Nuclear

The times they are a-changin'. Are the activists becoming more realistic or is the environmental crisis so bad that it requires an Earth triage of sorts? It is often said that when the green activists embrace nuclear power and the conservatives embrace ethanol, we know things are changing.

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, speaking in Texas last week before the Gulf Coast Power Association, said he remains in favor of moving away from fossil fuels. From the Houston Chronicle:

Moore, who is chairman and chief scientist of consulting firm Greenspirit Strategies and co-chair of a pro-nuclear energy group called the CASEnergy Coalition, said nuclear power could help wean the U.S. from its reliance on foreign oil and natural gas. It could also reduce the health effects of power plant emissions and save oil and gas for better uses, such as creating plastics, he said.

About one year ago in April, Moore wrote this essay, "Going Nuclear, A Green Makes the Case," in favor of nuclear power in the Washington Post, with this powerful opener:

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

An interesting take on one of the ethical questions of total destruction caused by nuclear materials:

Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.

And then back to Japan as providing one of the technological solutions:

And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons.

Economist: Company Ethics a Concern

I hope everyone caught the lead article "Globalisation's Offspring" in this week's Economist. It really captures our concept for the workshops for ethics in business at the Carnegie Council.

I like this part:

"India's Ranbaxy is still minute compared with a branded-drugs maker like Pfizer; China's Haier, a maker of white goods, is a minnow next to Whirlpool's whale. But the new multinationals are bent on the course taken by their counterparts in Japan in the 1980s and South Korea in the 1990s. Just as Toyota and Samsung eventually obliged western multinationals to rethink how to make cars and consumer electronics, so today's young thrusters threaten the veterans wherever they are complacent."

"But the newcomers' advantages are not overwhelming. Take the difference in company ethics, for instance, which worries plenty of rich-world managers. They fear that they will engage in a race to the bottom with rivals unencumbered by the fine feelings of shareholders and domestic customers, and so are bound to lose."

Network as Catalyst for Democracy

The Council of Europe Committee on Higher Education and Research and the International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy held a two-day "Symposium on Universities, Democratic Culture, and Human Rights" last week at the University of Pennsylvania. The group comprised university presidents, deans, department heads, professors, and civil society leaders.

I was the final speaker on a panel with David Maurrasse, Timothy Stanton, Josef Huber, and Radu Damian on creating a global network as a catalyst for democracy.

In response to what is seen as a "crisis in confidence" and an increased emphasis on the rhetoric rather than the practice of democracy, these higher education leaders met in Strasbourg last year. They adopted on June 23, 2006 a declaration titled, "The Responsibility of Higher Education for a Democratic Culture, Citizenship, Human Rights and Sustainability," which supports the principles in higher education of:

Democratic and accountable structures, processes, and practice;

Active democratic citizenship;

Human rights, mutual respect, and social justice;

Environmental and societal sustainability; and

Dialogue and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

The declaration was also a call for action in local, national, and global communities to put these principles into practice.

My suggestion was that information technology can help democratic practice and leaders in higher education have a responsibility to use this tool. Given the theme of responsibility and scholarship at this symposium and the recent International Studies Association conference in Chicago, I detect a concern among academics about their duty to society--their duty to question policymakers.

A global online network can help deepen democratic practice. In my view, an effective network has global reach or potential and can therefore affect change when called upon. The advantage of a single hub is that the knowledge and networks that it aggregates can more easily find their way on a syllabus or policy paper.

The Internet is a democratic tool because there is little cost of using it and it doesn't discriminate according to language, class, culture, etc. Like good democratic citizenship, it is up to the individual to learn how to use the Internet. While the Internet is a communications or knowledge management technology, democracy can be seen as a governing technology.

Themes on networking civil society I can offer from my experience with Policy Innovations over the past year:

1. Multi-stakeholder approach - build your community and expand by finding overlapping communities;

2. It is a messy process - Some people will participate in networks, some people won't. But human networks are chaotic--as are neurological networks. Nevertheless the weight of successful networks creates a gravity that draws people in.

3. Try to share your knowledge and value with others and look for a place for every stakeholder. Often the people who come to you undergo a self-selecting process.

4. Treat every relationship ethically and with respect. This may need no explanation, but connecting networks requires that relationships are handled with respect.

5. Maintain your guiding ethos, but be prepared to expand, change, and reinvent your methods and delivery systems. The Internet and world are constantly changing; be prepared to rethink copyright and intellectual property.

Finally, the offline meeting and a shared ethos are crucial for online networking success.

Toward a Fairer Trade Policy?

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel yesterday presented to the Administration a set of recommendations on future FTAs to increased labor and environmental protection. Rangel is laying out what the Democrats need to forge a new trade policy consensus and what will be needed for Bush to renew fast track and successfully complete the US-Korea FTA (KORUS). Fast track will expire at the end of June and the White House wants to make sure that the four trade agreements being considered are signed.

The endorsement of the proposal “would put fresh emphasis on environmental protection and access to low-cost medicines, as well as labor rights, in all new international trade pacts,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Modified texts of agreements will require: the adoption, maintenance, and enforcement of basic International Labor Organization (ILO) standards; and the implementation and enforcement of multilateral environmental agreements (such as CITES).

Finally, the Administration has been asked to strengthen American anti-dumping and countervailing laws against China.

Are we seeing the emergence of a fairer trade agreement? I made the case for such an approach in Policy Innovations in an article titled United States Must Redefine Fair Trade.

Such a policy tool may also provide one method by which basic human rights can be protected in the context of international economic relations. The lack of a binding international agreement on human rights that can guide business activities was a major concern of the panelists of a workshop we held last week at the Carnegie Council. We have uploaded audio clips of the panel "Taking Stock of Business and Human Rights." On the panel: Christine Bader of BP (audio clip), Joanne Bauer of Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (audio), Frank Mantero of GE, and David Schilling of Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (audio).

Alan Blinder Reconsiders Free Trade

Like most mainstream economists, Alan Blinder has been a free trader. But a front-page Wall Street Journal article today says Blinder, a Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman, is joining a growing number of economists who say "the downsides of trade in today's economy are deeper than they once realized."

For those of us who learned about the simple beauties of free trade in school, the world keeps getting more complicated.

According to the WSJ article, Blinder says the complicating factor is a new revolution in the global economy driven by communication technology that allows services to be delivered from far away, which may put 40 million Americans out of jobs over the next 20 years. The most vulnerable professions include computer programmers, data entry workers, actuaries, film editors, mathematicians, translators, graphic designers, and yes... even economists.

Brain AIDS Discovered in America

My sensationalist headline aside, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing some serious work on global health, and the man himself is focusing on the economic variety. Gates went before Congress recently to diagnose the U.S. with what you might call Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome—a shortage of knowledge workers due to strict immigration policies, poor domestic high-tech education, and low government spending on R&D. Microsoft published a transcript of the testimony.

Given the security concerns surrounding immigration and terrorism, safely increasing visa quotas might not be as easy at it seems. But it should come as a wake-up call that one of the primary pillars of the information society can't get enough people to staff his business.

In a creative economy, the efficiency of outsourcing butts up against the fact that location is very important—if your workers can perform their tasks from anywhere, chances are they will want to be somewhere good. And as the country that advertises its freedom and opportunity, America should maintain a comparative advantage in real estate. My guess is that earnest national loyalty motivates Gates along with economic self-interest.