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Notes from a Hammock
Topics: Information-BooksEconomics-Financial CrisisFinance-Financial ManagementGovernance-Corporate AccountabilityI’m just back from vacation and the usual summer fun: swimming, boating, murder and mayhem. Oh, that last part…no worries, it got no further than my hammock. That’s where I finally got around to reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first in Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s page-turning, best-selling trilogy of mysteries.
The Girl was published in 2005, but it sometimes seems Larsson is writing after the meltdown of 2008, and with the benefit of hindsight. His hero, Mikael, an investigative business journalist, speaks contemptuously of financial reporters who “treat mediocre financial whelps like rock stars” and fail “to scrutinize company boards with the same merciless zeal” that reporters apply to politicians. Notably, Mikael rails against bankers “who blow millions on foolhardy speculations.” Sound familiar?
It got me to thinking: Do business practices and corporations get a free pass from the media relative to the scrutiny applied to the worlds of politics, law, public policy, and the arts, for example? Would a sharper and stronger media spotlight have helped us avoid some recent disasters? Enron’s voodoo economics were uncovered, let’s remember, not by analysts or regulators but by an unheralded journalist at Fortune. But that was a rare and exceptional case; there are some good and knowledgeable financial journalists (including several HBS alumni) but not enough. In addition, the cash-strapped news business increasingly can’t afford in-depth reporting.
Partly filling this void are HBS faculty. Their research and their voices — in articles, opinion pieces, and congressional testimony — press for better business practices and necessary reforms. Consider, for example, the important work of Jay Lorsch, Rakesh Khurana, and Brian Hall on improving corporate boards, and Robert Pozen, David Moss, and others on financial regulatory reform.
Here’s a spoiler alert, if you haven’t read the book. The Girl features a CEO villain who surely is the most depraved, twisted, and evil business bad guy ever. And that may be the book’s silver lining: All those executives that the public is so angry about right now? They look like choir boys in comparison.
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