Statement from the Host – Prof. Dr. Ernst Mohr
Prof. Dr. Ernst Mohr
President
University of St. Gallen
As a business school, the University of St. Gallen (HSG)
is part of an
economic system that is currently facing immense criticism. Does the HSG need to question its role in
this system?
The HSG has in fact already been accused of playing a causal role
in the
current crisis. Accusations of this kind are nonsense. But of course we are questioning what we are
doing. We have planned a reappraisal process and are working on it intensively. Students and employers
want to be able to trust that our teaching is focusing on the right areas, businesses want to know that
we are highlighting what is really essential, and the public want to know that the HSG will provide
them with advice that is not just well-founded, but wise, too.
Much
that
was previously taken for granted in business and politics is now being called into question. How must
teaching and research change to take account of this?
Now that the tanker of world
finance
has run aground, schools of economics need to do far more than just undertake a scholarly reappraisal
of the new empirical circumstances, and indeed more than just look back on events with a know-it-all
attitude. The interplay between action-oriented training and reflective learning needs to be reassessed,
as does the relationship between relevance to practice and blindness to organisational deficiencies.
Social scientists – and economics is one of the social sciences – must question how they see their mission,
balancing their understanding of themselves as experts with their role as public intellectuals.
The 39th
St. Gallen Symposium has focussed on new boundaries in economics and politics? Where do you believe
these new boundaries are?
First, the global financial market was
not
the problem; it was the world’s first global speculative bubble that was the problem. Regulation needs
to concentrate in future on ensuring that speculative bubbles burst sooner, before they have a chance
to become so big. Secondly, systemic risk needs to be controlled in such a way that the state once again
becomes unpredictable as a lender of last resort. This includes solving the “Too Big to Fail” problem,
which cannot be solved by market mechanisms alone. Thirdly, the really crucial boundary, however, is
the one applicable to people. We have imperceptibly changed from a consumer society of copycats, where
everyone’s motivation is simply to avoid falling behind their neighbours (“keeping up with the Joneses”),
to a society where we want to get as far ahead of our neighbours as we can in terms of consumption (“leaving
the Joneses behind”). This is what led to the boundless willingness to take risks that fuelled the speculative
bubble.
The HSG is seen as the definitive talent hotbed
for new professionals
in the German-speaking countries. Has the crisis created a need to rethink conventional career paths?
I
hope so. But that’s up to the students. As the HSG, we don’t need to change much in this respect, because
the spectrum that we offer is already far from clichéd.
What
is your
message today for business school graduates?
For years I have been
telling
prospective students that personal fulfilment must come before professional success. That’s just as
true for graduates.