Mintzberg on why the US can’t be run like a business

In a recent piece for the Harvard Business Review, Desautels Professor Henry Mintzberg takes aim at US President Trump’s attempts to run the United States like a business, then demolishes them. Professor Mintzberg questions the wisdom of trying to marry such disparate systems — after all, business has a very simple, measureable yardstick in the form of profit, which makes it a poor model for governing. “What is the bottom line for terrorism,” Professor Mintzberg asks, before countering that “many activities are in the public sector precisely because their intricate results are difficult to measure.” The US has tried this before, and it has always failed.

Read full article: Harvard Business Review, April 3, 2017