For a truly global perspective, maybe Harvard Business School should hire a Globalian
Harvard Business School is looking for a new jefe, and on the short list is, at least as it is imagined by Business Week Magazine, a Srikant M. Datar. He would, according to the mag, be a “a leader with truly global perspective.” Unlike those white losers who built Harvard Business School as a parochial trade school for book keepers in Essex County. But really, the mag doesn’t put forward any argument at all for why Datar would bring a “truly global perspective,” other than the fact that he was born in India. Isn’t there at least a possibility that he would bring more of an Indian or even Imperial perspective, rather than a “truly global” one?
When I was a kid I more or less took for granted that I would end up working for an Old Country multinational company*, like my dad and my grandpa, travelling the world, hawking machines of one kind or another to Brazilians, Peruvians, Indonesians, Saudis, Canadians and other people who could use some hammered-and-dented Old Country steel. How’s that for a “truly global perspective”? Wait, maybe it was enviro-centric? Nah, as long as I’m an immigrant, it’s “truly global.”
* There were so many of them, too: Alfa-Laval, Atlas Copco, LM Ericsson, Saab-Scania, Volvo, SKF, Asea, Astra, and a few more whose names I can’t recall right now.
