DEANS OF BUSINESS SCHOOLS SHOULD BE BETTER INFORMED

Peter Chadwick posts (5 July) on JEDP (devloping leaders) HERE

“Brexit and the Business Trust Gap”

“Boulding believes the capitalist model is far from being broken, but that Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ – his belief that unseen market forces cause demand and supply to reach equilibrium in a free market – has been misread and conflated with the idea that ‘greed is good’ – the creed of Gordon Geko in the film Wall Street. The system is not broken but it has been badly damaged by individuals’ self-interest.” 

COMMENT

What Boulding believes about Adam Smith and the “invisible hand” is patently false. Nowhere does Smith link the now infamous metaphor to “supply and demand” nor to “equilibrium”.

For a Dean of Fuqua School of Business (no less) to write such ill-informed nonsense is disturbing. When did Boulding last read Wealth of Nations?

Where exactly did Smith link his use of the ‘Invisible Hand’ metaphor to either ‘supply and demand’ or to ‘equilibrium’?