The movement toward the notion of equal and widespread access has been documented and promoted in several books , including The Age of Access by Jeremy Rifkin and  The Mesh by Lisa Lansky, both of which explain how capitalism must change and the application of shared resources.

Joseph Schumpeter, writing in The Economist, says we may have assumed the world of ever expanding economic growth and mass influence and upward mobility for all would last forever. The reality of that assumption has crashed upon us with little time to adjust. Wireless companies that assumed that everyone will have smartphones and broadband connections, just like we had cars and TVs, may be misplaced, argues a new report, “The Poverty Problem,” by Bernstein Research Consultancy. Broadband penetration may have already plateaued, and Pay TV is now declining. This has created opportunities, argues Schumpeter, for companies from the developing world, such as Mexico’s TracFone Wireless, MedicallHome (that provides medical advice over the phone for $5/month), India’s Tata and China’s Haier. Their marketing is based on the solid assumption that products offered at ultra-low prices will be in as much demand in Detroit or Vancouver as they are in Delhi or Mexico City.

There’s an untapped huge consumer market partly created by the recession and growing income inequality that can’t be accessed by traditional business needs. It’s the increasing numbers of middle class people who no longer have the income or access to credit to make traditional consumer purchases. Smart companies like the German discounter Aldi are doing a booming business not only because of their small footprint but also because of a relatively small number of products. In a sense instead of marketing to the nouveaux riche, they are marketing to the nouveux pauvres. Another example of changes in our consumer society is the growth of online pawn shops such as Pawngo, aiming at college educated working professionals with temporary cash flow problems. It reflects the reality of entrepreneurs adjusting their business models to deal with the age of austerity.

Bryan Walsh, writing in Time magazine, says, “it’s the young who are leading the way toward a different form of consumption,” and that the real benefit of collaborative consumption is turning out to be social. In an era when families are scattered and we may not know the people down the street, sharing things, even with strangers we met online, allows us to make meaningful connections.

In their book, What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, authors Rachel Botsman, a partner at Collaborative Fund and a former senior director of the William J. Clinton Foundation, and Roo Rogers, cofounding partner of OZOlab contend that a collaborative consumption model is developing—systems of organized sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting and swapping. They argue that “collaborative consumption gives people the benefits of ownership with reduced personal burden and cost and also lower environmental impact—and it’s proving to be a compelling alternative to traditional forms of buying and ownership.”

Their concept and argument is structured around three types of systems: Product service systems which enable companies to offer goods as a service rather than sell them as products, and can be shared or rented peer-to-peer; redistribution markets, which are used or pre-owned goods moved from one location where they’re not needed to another where they are needed. These goods could be free or swapped or sold for cash, and because they are redistributed, they become part of a sustainability economy; and collaborative lifestyles, where people with similar needs or interests band together to share and exchange less-tangible assets such as time, space, skills and money. The exchanges happen mostly on a local or neighborhood level, as people share working spaces (e.g.: Citizen Space or Hub Culture), urban gardens (eg: SharedEarth or Landshare), parking spots (eg: ParkatmyHouse). This includes other exchanges such as peer-to-peer lending  (Zopa and Lending Club) and peer-to-peer travel (Airbnb and Roomorama).

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS describes how these three models come together to form a new economy of more sustainable consumerism. Collaborative Consumption started as a trend in conjunction with the emergence of shared collective content/information sites such as Wikipedia and Flickr and with the recent economic troubles and increasing environmental awareness, it is growing into an international movement. The authors predict it will be a fully-fledged economy within the next five years.

In this book the authors travel among the quiet revolutionaries (consumers and companies) from all around the world. They explore how businesses will both prosper and fail in this environment, and, in particular, they examine how it has the potential to help create the mass sustainable change in consumer behaviors this planet so desperately needs. The authors themselves are environmentalists, but they are also entrepreneurs, parents, and optimistic citizens. This is a good news book about long-term positive change.

The authors argue strongly that collaborative consumption is not just another niche trend, and not just a reaction to the recession, but a significant socioeconomic movement that will transform the way private enterprise thinks about their value proposition, products and services, and could revolutionize our economy. Their ideas reflect a number of important thought leaders such as Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom, who has written extensively about commons-based societies.

What’s particularly interesting are the fundamental principles Botsman and Rogers set out as a kind of manifesto:

• People will have “reputation bank accounts” alongside their regular bank accounts, as well as a reputation rating that will literally measure their contributions made to various kinds of collaborative communities;
• Peer-to-peer marketplaces where people “sell” their excess capacity in any form (cars, energy, square footage, food, products, services) which subsequently becomes a second source of income;
• Multitudes of services that enable consumers to repair, upgrade, customize pre-owned or second hand products;
• People will be able to use talents, skills or ideas as a “virtual currency” instead of paying with cash or credit;
• The consumer preference for handmade or locally produced goods will become the norm;
• Local sourcing from the neighborhood level will grow around creative and social projects;
• A whole ecosystem of apps and software for smartphones and computers will be developed to facilitate these developments.

Botsman and Rogers have received praise for their concepts from other thought leaders. Tony Hsieh, author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com says, “What can the next wave of collaborative marketplaces look like? Botsman and Rogers answer this question in a highly readable and persuasive way.” Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, says “We’re seeing an explosion of modest businesses where people help each other out via the Net.” Ron Conway, writing in The Economist, calls Botsman and Rogers’ ideas as the most “thought-provoking sector I see developing in 2012,” as part of the proliferation of the peer-to-peer markets.

Any interesting theme in the Collaborative Consumption argument is that of reputation capital. Colin Brown, writing in CNBC Business argues today brand equity can be destroyed or severely damaged overnight, citing the examples of BP, Toyota, News Corp and Tiger Woods. “Many see measurement of reputation—trust quotients, if you like—as the next gig frontier on the web.” A new breed of reputation brokers is starting to define web 3.0 with the equivalent of “PeopleRank” scores, a kind of Yelp rating for people and companies based on reputation scores. Brown cites the example of Damian Kimmelman, an ex-Wall Street risk assessment analyst who has established a London based company Duedil, a free service that offers inside information on every company in the U.K. and Ireland and their directors based on all public records and 900 news websites, providing a reputation ranking.

Certainly, collaborative consumption turns many of our current beliefs about capitalism and consumer consumption on their heads. Changing patterns of consumption will require the transformation of existing business models and the automotive industry is actually leading the way. Startups such as Zipcar, WhipCar and BlablaCar provide a service that gives access to vehicles and manufacturers including Peugeot, BMW and Daimler, by selling “personal mobility services” in addition to core product lines. These services, including car sharing schemes and ride sharing, are influencing how people get around at an increasing rate.

Botsman’s Collaborative Fund has invested in companies such as Skillshare, a marketplace that helps people share and make money from whatever they do best by teaching it to others; Taskrabbit, which lets individuals run errands just about anywhere and at any time for others in need; Rentcycle, the online marketplace that helps people find rental goods of any kind, nearby; CultureKitchen, a culinary school where people can share family recipes and insights into their cultural backgrounds.

Paul Zak, founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, has shown through his research that people get a spike of the pleasant neurotransmitter oxytocin when they’re entrusted with another person’s goods. “We’re gregariously social creatures, and one way we an exhibit that sociability is by sharing our things,” he says.

One could argue that one unpredictable outcome in this current age of austerity is the development of a different economy and different form of capitalism—collaborative consumption. It will be most interesting to see how this unfolds in the next decade.

According to the 2010 Wall Street Journal analysis of CEO compensation, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp. received $1.84 billion and Barry Diller, CEO of Interactive/Expedia.com received $1.14 billion, and another 6 CEOs received at least $500 million in total pay.

The average CEO of a major corporation in the U.S. was paid $15 million in 2005, and the figure has climbed dramatically since then. The average U.S. worker’s salary in 2005 was $40,000 and it has actually declined during the recession to approximately $34,000.00 Susanna Km writing an ABC News article just a week ago, said “the average CEO pay increased 14% to $12.9 million in 2011, 380 times that of the average worker, following a 22.8% rise in 2010.The U.S. stands out, compared to other areas in the world with respect of CEO compensation. For example, the CEO compensation as a multiple of the average employee compensation in the U.S. is a multiplier of 531 as of the year 2000, and much higher now. In comparison, the multiplier was 21 for Canada, 11 for Germany and Switzerland, 25 for Britain, 10 for Japan and 22 for Australia.

Recent legislation enacted in the U.S. has circumscribed some aspects of executive compensation, particularly the provisions allowing shareholders to have vote on compensation plans–although it is non-binding– but it remains to be seen whether the continuing widening gap between top executives, out of step with the rest of the world, will continue. According to a recent Reuters news release “ Days after being rebuked by shareholders, Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit and the bank’s directors have been sued by a shareholder accusing them of awarding outsized pay to top executives.” The suit said the directors breached their fiduciary duties by awarding more than $54 million of compensation in 2011 to the executives, including $15 million to Pandit, thought the bank’s performance did not justify it.  Fifty-five percent of the shareholders participating in an advisory vote rejected Pandit’s pay package, the first time that investors had rejected a compensation plan at a major U.S. bank. Citigroup became the fourth company this year joining FirstMerit Copr, Actuant Corp and International Game Technology to have a failed vote from shareholders about executive compensation.

The compensation for CEOs has raised serious questions about the ethical implications of such pay. One concern is that executives are encouraged to make business decisions that benefit themselves rather than the organization in order to meet performance goals necessary to receive incentive pay. This is particularly likely if the incentives are short-term in nature. For example, an executive may drive up short-term profits that cannot be sustained, only to collect a large bonus and leave the company before long-term financial problems are revealed.

One study compared CEO compensation for the 20 worst performing companies in 2000-2001 to the 20 best, measuring return on equity. The results? The companies with the lowest CEO compensation levels did had better business results than the companies with the higher CEO compensation levels.

What are the reasons for what appears to be exorbitant CEO salaries? Many reasons have been given: CEOs have too much power; the inattention of boards of directors; conflicts of interest by compensation consultants; and the reliance on stock options. Whatever the reasons, there are widespread expressions of discontent. Stock options push executives to make risky moves that lift the stock price in the short run, but ultimately hurt the company, critics argue.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the pay increase of senior executives has been a major source of rising inequality of wages in that country. In a recent Bloomberg poll, 80% of Americans agreed that CEOs are paid too much. Jay Lorsch, of the Harvard Business School, says that rising income inequality is political dynamite and damages the reputation of American business. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway says that top executives are paid too much. Even conservative Florida Governor Jeb Bush is on record as saying that out-of-control executive compensation is a treat to capitalism. Jesse Fried, a law professor at Harvard University and co-author of the book Pay Without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation, argues that much of CEO pay is not based on performance. Henry Mintzberg, widely renowned management guru at McGill University, argues that executive compensation bonuses are a bad idea and that compensation needs to be restructured.

Two things seem to be clearly evident. First, executive compensation has not suffered during the recent recession and the gap between that compensation and that of the average worker is rapidly widening. Second, shareholders are now challenging the both the merits for and size of executive compensation packages. The question is whether it is too little and too late.

Now that he is dead, legions of management consultants, academics and business leaders extol Jobs’ virtues as a leader. But is it deserved?  I believe not, if you take a balanced look at what constitutes good leadership in modern organizations.

To be sure, Jobs was a complex man full of contradictions, says one of his biographers, Leander Kahney. Jobs was an espoused Zen Buddhist which is anti-materialist, yet built the ultimate company which advocates living a technologically materialistic life. In an age where leadership transparency is encouraged as part of a healthy democratic system, Jobs instilled a culture of secrecy and surveillance in Apple workplaces, complete with video cameras constantly monitoring engineers’ work, and a “need to know only” system of internal company communication.

To say that Jobs was an autocratic leader and micromanager would be an understatement. His autocratic and egotistical style led to his early power struggle with the Board and he left in l984, only to return in l997 to build Apple into the global powerhouse it is today. During both stints at Apple, Jobs’ leadership style could be characterized as the old school “carrot and stick” approach, using praise and flattery, but mostly the stick of fear and criticism. When Fortune magazine profiled America’s toughest bosses, it said of Jobs, his “inhuman drive for perfection can burn out even the most motivated worker.” Kahney claimed Jobs’ verbal assaults on staff, replete with anger and foul language, were terrifying to staff. Fortune magazine dubbed Jobs as “one of Silicon Valley’s leading egomaniacs.”

The dark side of Apple and perhaps a reflection of Jobs’ leadership style are the labor conditions in Apple’s Foxconn manufacturing plants in China. In reaction to a spate of worker suicides where fourteen died in 2010, a report by twenty Chinese universities described Foxconn factories as labor camps and detailed widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime. In response to the suicides, Foxconn installed suicide-prevention netting at some facilities, and it promised to offer substantially higher wages at its Shenzhen production bases.Workers were also forced to sign a legally binding document guaranteeing that they and their descendants would not sue the company as a result of unexpected death, self-injury or suicide. In January 2012, 150 workers in Wuhan threatened to commit mass suicide because of worsening work conditions. The employees had asked for a raise but were told they could either quit with compensation or keep their jobs with no raise. The employees quit, but did not receive their compensation.

If Jobs was such a great leader, who oversaw in detail virtually all aspects of Apple’s business, how could he either be unaware of the situation with Foxconn or allowed it to happen in the first place?

Claiming Steve Jobs was a great leader smacks more of hero worship than an objective view of what a great organizational leader should be and do. Extolling his virtues to a new genenration of up-and-coming leaders would be a serious mistake.

Ronald Riggio, writing in Psychology Today argues that although Jobs was a visionary leader, a master marketer and presenter, he “could also be a tyrant. He was obsessively controlling, and given to fits of rage, throwing tantrums…took credit for others’ ideas…and fell short of the qualities possessed by the very best leaders.”

Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Jobs is a very revealing picture of both sides of Jobs’ character—the brilliant, charismatic visionary, and the impulsive, crude, and mean-spirited man. He thought nothing of parking in handicapped parking spaces, and denied the paternity of his first daughter so that she and her mother had to live on welfare. Jobs, like Bill Gates, was a very wealthy man, yet according to public records, made no substantial commitments to charities or worthy causes.

The concern that I have, and that it is reflected by other leadership experts, is the faulty cause and effect, and “ends justifies the means” arguments that hold up Jobs as a leader to be emulated.  It goes something like this: It doesn’t matter what kind of boss you are like—meaning abusive–as long as you get results (financial); and as long as you attain your goal (financial results), any methods to get there are okay, including abusing people.

Robert Sutton, a management professor at Stanford University, examined the behavior of abusive bosses, published in his book, The No-Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. In his research he ran across many examples of Silicon Valley and high-tech leaders who extolled the virtues of Jobs abusive behavior as being necessary to build a successful company. Sutton contended “it is troubling that there’s this notion in our culture that if you’re a winner, it’s okay to be an asshole.”

Sutton argues that despite Jobs’ and Apple’s success, his research shows that abusive bosses are bad for the bottom line, and there are far more successful companies—such as Google, Virgin Atlantic, Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines, for example—that are not led by abusive bosses.

Mike Daisy wrote a New York Times op-ed piece “Against Nostalgia,” in which he said, “We can admire the design perfection and business acumen while acknowledging the truth: with Apple’s immense resources at his command he [Jobs] could have revolutionized the industry to make devices more humanely and more openly, and chose not to do so.”

The idolization of Jobs’ style of leadership is so counter to the general trend leadership in our society. Authoritarian leaders are not concerned about the will and needs of their followers. They lead primarily through coercion. If there is a vision, the followers must share the leader’s vision. And while clever authoritarian leaders have learned the language of teamwork, collaboration and shared purpose, their view of the world still requires obedience.

A University of Iowa study, “Perpetuating Abusive Supervision: Third-Party Reactions to Abuse in the Workplace, found that “when a supervisor’s performance outcomes are high, abusive behavior tends to be overlooked by third parties when they evaluate a supervisor’s effectiveness.”  In other words, while people might not want to be friends with an abusive boss like Jobs, they’ll tolerate his behavior as long as he is productive.

Now, executives—both current and aspiring—everywhere in North America are either quoting what Steve Jobs said, but would exhort others by criticizing them by the admonishment that “Steve Jobs wouldn’t do that.”

Perhaps the explanation is that our culture, and that includes business, is obsessed with hero workshop and celebrities inordinately including their bad behavior. Where charisma and wealth become the predominant measure of success rather than societal well-being and how we treat each other, abusive leaders will continue to have a following. One thing is for sure, bringing up the next generation of leaders to emulate Steve Jobs’ leadership style will take our organizations, if not our society, backwards.

A study by researchers at Texas A&M University, and published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, shows that brainstorming may not be the best strategy to generate unique and varied ideas. The researchers concluded that group brainstorming exercises can lead to fixation on only one idea or possibility, blocking out other ideas and possibilities, leading eventually to a conformity of ideas. Lead researcher Nicholas Kohn explains, “Fixation to other people’s ideas can occur unconsciously and lead to you suggesting ideas that mimic your brainstorming partners. Thus, you potentially become less creative.” The researchers used AOL Instant Messenger as their electronic discussion format when conducting the experiments, which included groups of two, three, and four subjects. This study and other studies have also shown that taking a break (allowing for a mental incubation period in participants) can stem the natural decline in quantity (production deficit) and the variety of ideas, and encourage problem solving.

Therefore, group creativity may be an overestimated method to generate ideas and individual brainstorming exercises (such as written creativity drills) may be more effective. If ideas are to be shared in a group setting, members of the group need to be aware of this fixation phenomenon, and take steps to prevent conformity. This will lead to a more vibrant, fresh discussion and a wider range of possible solutions.

In an article in The New Yorker, neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer argues, “Brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is a problem with brainstorming. It doesn’t work.” Research as early as 1958 at Yale University showed that students working on their own came up with roughly twice as many solutions to problems as brainstorming groups. Lehrer contends that brainstorming didn’t unleash the potential of the group, but rather made each individual less creative. Lehrer cites the work of Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University who argues “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone, and later pool their ideas.”

Brainstorming seems to an enshrined process because group work is the cornerstone of most organizations today. Ben Jones of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University analyzed over 19 million peer reviewed academic papers and more than 2 million patents fro the past 50 years to show that levels of teamwork have increased more than 95% in scientific fields. Charlan Nemeth of the University of California argues that one of the problems with brainstorming is that participants receive little or no training in brainstorming methodology, so there results are suspect.

In an article, “Collaborative fixation: Effects of others’ ideas on brainstorming,” published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, Nichols Kohn and Steven Smith, they concluded that “brainstorming is inefficient,” and less productive than individual brainstorming, identifying “social loafing,” as one of the reasons. Clifford Block concluded in his research published in the Administrative Science Quarterly that “group participation when using brainstorming inhibits creating thinking.”

Lehrer concludes his article by saying, “the fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions,” adding, “when the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself.”

If leaders and consultants use brainstorming, they may want to mitigate its negative results by making these modifications:

• Have groups collaborate frequently by having them in close physical proximity to each other;
• Pay attention to creating physical spaces that enable good collaboration, which facilitates people frequently “running into each other” while at work;
• Revise the “no criticism” script of brainstorming to encourage debate about ideas;
• Use appreciative inquiry techniques, where group participants build on ideas suggested by each individual in the group.

One thing is for sure, using brainstorming just for the sake of it because it’s expected or habit, without proper contextual training, may be not just a waste of time, but actually less productive and creative.

In Japan, workaholism is called “karoshi”—death by overwork—and it’s estimated to cause 1,000 deaths per year and nearly 5% of that country’s stroke and heart attack deaths in employees under age 60. In the Netherlands, it’s resulted in a new condition known as “leisure illness,” estimated to affect 3% of its entire population, according to one study. Workers actually get physically sick on weekends and vacations as they stop working and try, in vain, to relax. Statistics Canada in 2009 reported that 1/3 of Canadians considered themselves workaholics.

What has happened to the perennial predictions of a leisure society and escape from long hours of work? In the late 1700′s, Benjamin Franklin predicted we’d work a 4-hour week. In 1933 the U.S. Senate passed a bill for an official 30-hour workweek, which was vetoed by President Roosevelt. In 1965, a U.S. Senate subcommittee predicted a 22-hour workweek by 1985 and a 14-hour work week by 2000. None of those predictions have come to pass. In fact the opposite is true. The number of hours people work is increasing.

Working hours in North America and the U.K. have steadily risen in the last 20 years. A DIT research report found that 1 in 6 employees now work more than 60 hours a week. Full time employees in the U.K. work the longest hours in Europe and a British Medical Association report found that 77% of consultants work more than 50 yours a week and 46% more than 60 hours.

According to U.S. Census and CPS data, the share of employed American men regularly working more than 48 hours per week is higher today than it was 25 years ago. Using CPS data from 1979 to 2006, this increase was greatest among highly educated, highly-paid, and older men, was concentrated in the 1980s, and was largely confined to workers paid on a salaried basis. A new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) confirms that on average, people in the U.S. are putting in 20 per cent more hours of work than they did in 1970. It also shows that in the same period, the number of hours worked in all the other industrialized countries, except for Canada, decreased. The average work week in the U.S. is 54 hours according to a Sage Software Survey in 2007. In an average week, only 14 percent work 40 hours or less. One-third work 50-59 hours a week, and 80% work between 40 and 79 hours according to a 2006 study of 2,500 Americans. In Japan, in contrast, annual work hours declined 17 per cent and in France they declined by 24 per cent. In general, a third of all American workers could be viewed as chronically overworked in 2004, according to a report by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute in New York City.

The problem of increased working hours is made more acute by the fact that fewer workers take vacations and breaks than previously. One recent study by Expedia.com showed that only 38% of U.S. employees are taking all of their earned vacation days. The average used only 14 out of 18 days. At least 30 percent of employed adults don’t take all their vacation days, according to a 2005 Harris Interactive poll. Each year, Americans hand back 421 million days to their employers.

The impact on people and the organizations of overwork are significant. In 2002, The Work Foundation reported that job satisfaction has plummeted and that so-called “high performance” management techniques actually increased worker dissatisfaction and performance. A British Social Attitudes survey and several Gallup studies have pointed to increasing levels of job dissatisfaction among workers in all industries.

A contributing factor to the problem of workaholism is the prevailing belief in hard work as the route to success, particularly wealth. Notions of hard work are predominantly held by the middle class and poor people and originate from the industrial revolution and Protestant religious tenants, which viewed hard work both as a virtue and magic formula for success. Hard work has never been a belief embraced by the upper class and wealthy.

But the growing problem of income inequality, particularly in the U.S., has clearly called into question the validity of the hard work belief.

The United States is the most economically stratified society in the western world. As The Wall Street Journal reported, a recent study found that the top .01% or 14,000 American families hold 22.2% of wealth, and the bottom 90%, or over 133 million families, just 4% of the nation’s wealth. The U.S. Census Bureau and the World Wealth Report 2010 both report increases for the top 5% of households even during the current recession. Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, the richest 1% has tripled their cut of America’s income pie in one generation. The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25, 2010 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. New data shows that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it’s been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The Pew Foundation study, reported in the New York Times, concluded, “The chance that children of the poor or middle class will climb up the income ladder, has not changed significantly over the last three decades.” The Economist‘s special report, Inequality in America, concluded, “The fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest earners and towards companies whose profits have reached record levels as a share of GDP.”

It would not be hard to conclude that even with positive and hopeful attitudes of the middle class and poor people, hard work alone is unlikely to bring the promise of wealth into their lives.

Most people have been told all their lives that the only way to be successful in life is to work harder and longer than the next guy.

But the evidence tells us that that’s simply not true. Consider some of the most successful people of our time: Warren Buffett has a tiny office and employs only a handful of people. He works about three hours a day, but he’s one of the richest men in the world. Bill Gates dropped out of college but went on to create one of most influential and successful companies in the world. Neither George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan were fans of hard work, yet they were both elected president of the United States twice.

How does hard work relate to workaholism?

In the U.S., and Canada workaholism remains what it’s always been: the so-called “respectable addiction” that’s dangerous as any other—whether or not they hold jobs. “Yes, workaholism is an addiction, an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it’s not the same as working hard or putting in long hours,” says Bryan Robinson, PhD, one of the leading researchers on the disorder and author of Chained to the Desk and other books on workaholism. Workaholic’s obsession with work is all occupying, which prevents workaholics from maintaining healthy relationships, outside interests, or even take measures to protect their health.

So who are these workaholics? According to several research studies, there is no typical profile, although Baby Boomers are more susceptible to being workaholics than Generation Y workers. Most workaholics are successful. And workaholics are more likely to be managers or executives, more likely to be unhappy about their work/life balance and work on average more than 50 hours per week. They neglect their health to the point of devastating results and ignore their friends and family. They avoid going on vacation so they don’t have to miss work. And even if they do go on vacation, they aren’t fully present because their mind is still on work.

One thing that we do know is that workaholics tend to seek out jobs that allow them to exercise their addiction. The workplace itself does not create the addiction any more than the supermarket creates food addiction, but it does enable it. Workaholics tend to seek high-stress jobs to keep the adrenaline rush going.

Research shows that the seeds of workaholism are often planted in childhood, resulting in low self-esteem that carries into adulthood. Many workaholics are the children of alcoholics or come from some other type of dysfunctional family, and work addiction is an attempt to control a situation that is not controllable. Or they tend to be products of what can be called ‘looking good families’ whose parents tend to be perfectionists and expect unreasonable success from their kids. These children grow up thinking that nothing is ever good enough. Some just throw in the towel, but others say, ‘I’m going to show I’m the best in everything so my parents approve of me.’”

The problem is, perfection is unattainable, whether you’re a kid or a successful professional. Anyone who carries a mandate for perfection is susceptible to workaholism because it creates a situation where the person never gets to cross the finish line, because it keeps moving farther out.

Here’s the irony. Despite logging in mega hours and sacrificing their health and loved ones for their jobs, workaholics are frequently ineffective employees. Workaholics tend to be less effective than other workers because it’s difficult for them to be team players, they have trouble delegating or entrusting co-workers, or they take on so much that they aren’t as organized as others.

Research indicates four distinct workaholic “working styles”: The bulimic workaholic feels the job must be done perfectly or not at all. Bulimic workaholics often can’t get started on projects, and then scramble to complete it by deadline, often frantically working to the point of exhaustion—with sloppy results. The second style is the relentless workaholic, the adrenaline junkie who often takes on more work than can possibly be done. In an attempt to juggle too many balls, they often work too fast or are too busy for careful, thorough results The third style is the attention-deficit workaholic who often starts with fury, but fails to finish projects—often because they lose interest for another project. They often savor the “brainstorming” aspects but get easily bored with the necessary details or follow-through. And finally there is the savoring workaholic who is slow, methodical, and overly scrupulous. They often have trouble letting go of projects and don’t work well with others. These are often consummate perfectionists, frequently missing deadlines because “it’s not perfect.”

Where workaholism affects organizations is the lack of knowledge by managers. Many companies often confuse workaholics for hard workers, in essence enabling them on their path to self-destruction.

So how do you know if you’re a workaholic? Tarla Grant, writing in the Globe and Mail, on the subject, identified 5 warning signs. See if these describe you:

• Compared to 5 years ago, work is a regular part of your evenings and weekends;
• You spend less time with family, friends, community and being engaged in regular activities such as exercise;
• You eat faster, talk faster, walk faster. You feel like you’re constantly trying to “catch up.”
• You’re developing skeletal and muscular problems because of the amount of time you spend sitting or standing, under stress;
• Your focus and concentration is not good, and your productivity is actually declining.

The problem of workaholism is growing in our society and organizations, and the effects underestimated in terms of its impact on the quality of life and economic productivity, an issue that needs to be addressed by our political leaders and captains of industry.

In an article I wrote in the Financial Post in May, 2010, entitled “What’s Happened To The Glass Ceiling,” I said, “Call it a glass ceiling, glass wall or a glass floor – there is still a barrier blocking senior women leaders in organizations. High-powered executive and professional women are increasingly opting out of, being bypassed, or otherwise disappearing from the highly professional workforce. While this exists, true diversity in organizations will not happen.”

There is clear evidence that the situation for women in North America, but particularly in the U.S. is actually deteriorating according to research data from the workplace, and the clear ultra conservative agenda of right-wing political groups in the U.S. that are attacking women’s rights.

Research from a 2011 Grant Thornton International Business Report found that women now hold 20% of senior management positions globally, a decline from 24% in 2009, and also found that the percentage of organizations that have no women in senior management has risen to 38% in 2011 from 35% in 2009. Only 16% of women in G7 countries held senior roles while 27% in Asia-Pacific did so, with increasing numbers in Hong Kong and Thailand. Globally, only 8% of companies had female CEOs, and in the U.S. only 3.6% of Fortune 500 companies. In contrast in Asian economies, Thailand had 30%, China 19% and Taiwan 18%.

The U.S. in particular is taking steps backwards with respect to gender equality. In the field of law, women are more than 50% of the law students, but less than 25% of law firm partners, federal judges, and law school deans. In 2012, women are expected to earn 63% of master’s degrees and 54% of doctoral and professional degrees, but comprise only 20% of full university professors and only 25% of college presidents. Women comprise only 17% of the U.S. House of Representatives, 16% of the U.S. Senate, 16% of state governors and 24% of all state legislators. Internationally, the U.S. ranks 85^th in the world in its share of women in national legislative bodies. Of the largest 100 cities in the U.S., only 9% have female mayors.

A recent Catalyst Corporation report showed that women held only 16% of Board of Directors seats at large companies, and more than 25% of Fortune 500 companies had no female executive officers.

Even in the movie industry the picture is the same. In 2011, men directed 95% of the top-grossing films, an increase since 1998. Only 4 women have been nominated for Oscars as best director and only one has won. Eighty-four percent of the 2011 Oscar nominations for screenwriting went to men. Seventy percent of movies starred men, not women. And finally 77% of all Oscars went to men.

So clearly, women’s equality measured in many ways, is not advancing, it may be moving backwards. And yet we’re witnessing contradictory trends. A Pew Center Global Attitudes Project found that 75% of respondents in the U.S. and 80% in Canada believe that women make equally good political leaders, and the numbers were much higher and Europe, Asia and parts of South America. Another Pew Center study, Social and Demographic Survey found women leaders possessed more leadership traits of honesty, intelligence, compassion and creativity than men, whereas men scored higher only in decisiveness. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, authors of The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking The Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Activate, and authors of an article in the Harvard Business Review on the subject said, “based on their 2012 research study of 7,280 leaders in organizations, found that in 12 of the 16 categories of leadership traits, women were rated higher than men, including areas that are traditionally thought of as male strengths (eg: drive for results; taking initiative). Other studies by the Harvard Business School and Catalyst Corporation found that large companies with the highest proportions of women in senior management significantly outperformed those with the lowest proportion in terms of return on investment.

For the past few years, I have been working as a mentor and leadership trainer with graduates of several business schools in British Columbia, the majority of whom are female, and I must conclude that their preparation, positive attitude and capabilities as a group are far superior to the male students.

So what are we to conclude and do about the thickening glass ceiling? Harvard’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Robin Ely argue that a critical mass of women in senior leadership and on boards is required, and that may mean passing legislation as Norway has done, required at least 40% female board members.

A 2011 McKinsey and Company study which reviewed over 100 existing research studies on the subject and interviewing over 2,800 male and female leaders, concluded that there were four problems that must be overcome: structural—the lack of role models for women, exclusion from informal networks, and absence of sponsors; lifestyle issues—women who also value family life and are not prepared to commit to an executive’s 24/7 working lifestyle; imbedded institutional mindsets—entrenched beliefs held by male managers what women can’t handle leadership jobs; and imbedded individual mindsets that indicate that women are less satisfied with careers than men.

Clearly, leaders in our private and public organizations, and politicians need to take note of this growing problem in North America, particularly the U.S. Perhaps a clue to the present start and stop progress is given by feminist movement pioneer Gloria Steinem: “Classically speaking, resistance to change comes at two points. The first is right at the beginning, when you break the rules and people say, No, women can’t do that. And the second comes when you reach a critical mass, as if the other group might have great influence, or, in the case of women, might actually outnumber them. We’re now in the second stage of resistance.”

A study by Dr. Paul Piff at the University of California, Berkeley, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contends that wealthy people are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law for personal gain without compunction. The study concluded, “upper class individuals unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.”

Seven experiments such as aggressive driving of a car, lying in a negotiation and cheating to win a prize, using different kinds of measures in different situations, comprised the study. One part of the study involved observing a large number of cars at a pedestrian crosswalk. The researchers found that almost 50% of the “higher-status” cars such as a Mercedes did not yield to pedestrians, while almost all of the “lowest-status” vehicles did yield.

Stephane Cote of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, who co-authored the study with Piff concluded, “we found a trend that upper class individuals—people who have the most money, the most income, the best education and the most prestigious job—have a tendency to engage in less ethical behavior.”

While there examples of wealthy people who are generous and seemingly not motivated by greed—such as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and George Soros—money seems to have a damaging effect in most cases, Piff concludes.

Piff also cited a 2008 study of shoplifting that found upper-income and more educated participants were more likely to have reported shoplifting in their lives. This finding is reflected in the the book, The Steal, by Rachel Shteir, who cites the increased incidence of “ethical stealing” during the recession is due to the fact that people feel less guilty about stealing when they see the excess of celebrities and other wealthy people. Shteir cites a study that finds Americans with incomes of $70,000 a year shoplift 30% more than those earning $20,000 a year.

Another piece of research that examines the capacity for compassion and empathy of wealthy people compared to less wealthy people, is relevant here.

Michael Kraus, a researcher at the University of California, whose study was published in the journal Psychological Science, concludes that wealthy people are less adept at reading others’ emotions in comparison with uneducated and poor people. Krause concluded that people from lower economic backgrounds often have to rely on others, whereas wealthy people don’t ask for help often. Krause argues that wealthy people may be “less concerned and less perceptive of other people’s needs and wishes. They show a deficit in empathetic accuracy.”

The study’s co-author Dacher Keltner, of the University of California says, “we are living in a period of historically high inequality [and] people in positions of power are not going to see [the inequality]. They are going to be blind to it and that has enormous implications for how we educate leaders, why they may not see what’s obvious and why they may not even understand the suffering of the people below them.”

The research cited is consistent with the studies that show wealthy people give less to charity than poor people. In a study by Paul Piff and his colleagues at the University of California and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they found that lower class individuals were prepared to devote a much greater share of their income to support charity than wealthy people. This study is supported by the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, which shows that people at the lower end of the income scale give almost 30% more of their income in comparison with the middle class and wealthy.

At the same time, the wealthy may have developed an attitude of aggressive entitlement. Economist Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, argues that “self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable,” and “a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold.”

The problem of ethically challenged behavior of the wealthy may become worse because income inequality is growing in America.

The U.S. is the most economically stratified society in the western world. The Wall Street Journal reported a recent study that the top .01% or 14,000 American families hold 22.2% of the wealth and the bottom 90% or over 133 million families, hold just 4% of the nation’s wealth. The U.S. Census Bureau and the World Wealth Report of 2010 both indicated wealth increased for the top 5% of households even during the recession. Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, the richest 1% has tripled their cut of America’s income pie in one generation.

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and the middle-and-working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades according to a 2010 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. New data shows the gap in after-tax income between the richest 1% of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it’s been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle 1/5 of the Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The Pew Foundation study, reported in the New York Times concluded, “The chance that children of the poor or middle class will climb up the income ladder, has not changed significantly over the last three decades.” TheEconomist‘s special report, Inequality in America, concluded, “The fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest earners and towards companies whose profits have reached record levels as a share of GDP.”

But it’s not just income disparities that create problems, it’s the accompanying social inequalities in health, education and other social indicators. Between 1983 and 1999, men’s life expectancy decreased in more than 50 U.S. counties, according to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health. For women, the news was even worse; life expectancy decreased in more than 900 counties—more than a quarter of the total. The U.S. no longer boasts anywhere near the world’s longest life expectancy. It doesn’t even make the top 40. In this and in many other ways, the richest nation on earth is not the healthiest.

Research indicates that high inequality reverberates through societies on multiple levels, correlating with, if not causing, more crime, less happiness, poorer mental and physical health, less racial harmony, and less civic and political participation. Tax polices and social welfare programs, then, take on importance far beyond determining how much income people hold onto.

The level of inequality we allow represents our answer to a “very important question,” says Nancy Krieger, of Harvard University, and that is, “what kind of society do we want to live in?”

There are clear disturbing indicators from the research of Piff, Keltner and others, that the dominance of the wealthy, along with their apparent disposition for greed and unethical behavior, will feed the trend of income inequality, at the cost of well being for millions of Americans.

A recurring problem I hear from organizations when working on improving communication and relationships is the constant frustration and obstacle to productivity posed by emails.

But at least one company has decided to take a bold step to address that problem. Thierry Breton, chief executive of Atos, Europe’s largest IT company, plans to put a “zero” email policy in place by 2013.  Breton argues only 10% of the 200 electronic messages his more than 74,000 employees around the globe receive each day turn out to be useful. “The email is no longer the appropriate communication tool. It’s time to think differently,” Breton says. Instead, Atos employees will use chat-type electronic communication similar to social networking platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. In a similar move, Germany’s Volkswagen AG has decided to stop sending emails to certain employees after work hours.

How serious a problem is email? Studies including one by Thomas Jackson and his colleagues, published in the papers of the Conference of Empirical Assessment, shows it can take more than a minute for an employee to focus their attention on the task at hand after they’ve been alerted to a new email. If the average person gets 100 emails a day, that’s 90 minutes wasted having to refocus on what they were doing.

Jonathan Spira, author of Overload: How Too Much Information is Hazardous to Your Organization, contends that information overload cost the U.S. economy nearly US$1-trillion in 2010 and that reading and processing just 100 emails a day can occupy more than 50% of a knowledge worker’s day, because it takes five minutes for the brain to get back on track after a 30 second interruption.

However, Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, in a New York Times article argues that email in some ways was a Godsend, because it relieved companies of the expensive and increasing volume of telephone calls. But, he says, email also “removed the cost, both monetary and social from personal communication.”

For the younger generation, according to studies by James Katz, director for the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University, telephone calls were  replaced by social media platforms, and texting, because the communication is immediate and much more informal than emails.

On the other hand, David Allen, a consultant and author of Getting Things Done, contends it is not possible to effectively ban emails. He claims the problems associated with them have more to do with a lack of focus in organizations on clear communication.

While banning all emails may not be possible, steps toward gaining control over excessive and unproductive emails and taking email sabbaticals may be positive steps organizations can take, Amy Gallo writes in the Harvard Business Review.

One thing is certain, the volume of emails and reliance on them for communication in organizations is becoming more acute and dysfunctional, and information overload is now the No. 1 problem in organizations.

Facebook has more than 750 million users worldwide. It facilitates people keeping in touch online with a network of “friends” and the size of these networks varies from a handful to hundreds of thousands. One of the things that has not been clear is whether there is any relationship between the number of friends a person has and the number of their real-life friends. Some experts have observed anectodally that social network friends are very different than real-life friends.

To provide a more scientific perspective, researcher Geraint Rees, and his colleagues at the University College of London examined the fMRI brain scans of 125 frequent Facebook users. After the scans, the number of online and offline friends were recorded. The researchers reported that the typical subject had on average, 300 friends on Facebook. They concluded that having more friends online did not significantly make particular regions of the brain larger or more active. However, the researchers concluded there was a positive correlation between the number of friends the subjects had online with the number of friends they had offline.

Jeffrey Hancock, a professor of communication at Cornell University and author of a study on Facebook’s psychological effects, argues that Facebook boosts self-esteem: “Unlike a mirror, which reminds us of who we really are and may have a negative effect on self-esteem if that image doesn’t match with our idea, Facebook can show a positive version of ourselves. We’re not saying that it’s a deceptive version of self, but it’s a positive one.”

A study by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., published in Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking found that viewing and editing your Facebook profile could boost your self-esteem. This research is based on Objective Self-Awareness theory, as reported by Adoree Durayappah, in a Psychology Today article. The theory suggests that people the view the self as both a subject and an object, and that Facebook can be a tool to promote greater self-awareness.

Not so, argues recent researchers.

According to research by Amanda Forrest of the University of California and Joanne Wood at Waterloo University, published in Psychological Science, they found those with low self-esteem feel safer sharing on Facebook. However, the study also found that those with low self-esteem frequently post updates that work against them. They tend to criticize their friends with negative details of their lives, making them less likeable as “friends.”  Forrest and Wood also found that those people with high self-esteem, who usually posted more positive updates, received more positive responses.

Dilney Goncaleves, at the IE Business School in Madrid, conducted a research study which argues that much of how we judge our success in life is by comparison with others: ” The problem is that Facebook gives us a limited view of our friends’ lives, and that view tends to be unrealistically positive.” He added that the more friends you have, the more likely you are to spend your day enviously reading about someone else’s paradise vacation, new girlfriend or job promotion.

Psychology researcher Soraya Mehdizadeh at York University in Toronto, conducted a study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking of 100 Facebook users and measured activities such as photo sharing, wall postings and status updates and frequency and duration of use. After measuring each subject using the Narcissism Personality Inventory and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Mehdizadeh discovered that narcissists and people with lower self-esteem were more likely to spend more than a hour a day on Facebook and were more prone to post self-promotional photos and showcase themselves through status updates and wall activity.

Alex Jordan at Stanford University conducted a study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,  of 80 Facebook users, focusing on the number of positive and negative experience their peers were experiencing. He found they consistently over-estimated the fun their friends were having and underestimated their negative or unhappy experiences. He concluded that Facebook may be worsening the tendency to thin everyone else is enjoying themselves more than you are. “By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people’s lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles’ hell of human nature. And women may be especially vulnerable to keeping up with what they imagine is the happiness of the Joneses,” Jordon contends.

So there may a dark lining to the shiny cloud of Facebook, which is obviously growing in use.

For the most part these programs are theory-oriented in nature, and use the traditional tools of conceptual learning—case studies, lectures, films and discussions—relying on the contrast between what managers do and what leaders do. And it appears that the MBA degree and salaries of MBA students are not longer what they used to be.

The problem with many business school leadership programs is that they teach ideas, not real life behaviors, and business school professors are chosen by virtue of their ability to publish detailed research, not having had leadership experience themselves. Understanding something intellectually often has little to do with being able to do it. Adult learners need experiences and coaching to turn concepts into leadership behaviors.

A New York Times article entitled, Is It Time To Retrain B-Schools? has had a massive response. Kelly Holland, the author of the article says among other things, “Critics of business education have many complaints. Some say the schools have become too scientific, too detached from real-world issues. Others say students are taught to come up with hasty solutions to complicated problems. Another group contends that schools give students a limited and distorted view of their role – that they graduate with a focus on maximizing shareholder value and only a limited understanding of ethical and social considerations essential to business leadership .Such shortcomings may have left business school graduates inadequately prepared to make the decisions that, taken together, might have helped mitigate the financial crisis, critics say.”

In an article in the London Times, entitled Harvard’s Masters of the Apocalypse, Philip Broughton, a Harvard Business School graduate and author of What They Teach You At Harvard,  says, “ The Masters of Business Administration, that swollen class of jargon-spewing, value-destroying financiers and consultants have done more than any other group of people to create the economic misery we find ourselves in…You can draw up a list of the greatest entrepreneurs of recent history, from Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google and Bill Gates of Microsoft, to Michael Dell, Richard Branson, Lak-shmi Mittal – and there’s not an MBA between them. Yet the MBA industry continues to grow, and business schools provide vital income to academic institutions: 500,000 people around the world now graduate each year with an MBA, 150,000 of those in the United States, creating their own management class within global business. From the Royal Bank of Scotland to Merrill Lynch, from HBOS to Lehman Brothers, the Masters of Disaster have their fingerprints on every recent financial fiasco.”

Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management studies at McGill University in Montreal, also argues that because students spend so much time developing quick responses to packaged versions of business problems, they do not learn enough about real-world experiences. Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands,” a historical analysis of business education, says that business schools never really taught their students that, like doctors and lawyers, they were part of a profession, with professional standards.  And in the 1970s, he said, the idea took hold that a company’s stock price was the primary barometer of a leader’s success. This, among other things, changed the business schools’ concept of proper management techniques. Instead of being viewed as long-term economic stewards, he says that managers came to be seen as mainly as the agents of the owners – the shareholders – and responsible for maximizing shareholder wealth. He goes on to say that “we can’t rely on the usual structure of MBA education, which divides the management world into the discrete business functions of marketing, finance, accounting, and so on.”

Warren Bennis and James O’Toole have written how business schools have been on the wrong track for years, claiming among other things that “MBA programs face intense criticism for failing to impart useful skills, failing to prepare leaders, failing to instill norms of ethical behavior.” Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria wrote that schools of management will fail to produce consistently principled, decent leaders until management itself becomes a profession, like medicine or the law which will include a code of conduct.

For universities, business schools have been a means to an end—money. Business schools are less expensive to operate than graduate schools with elaborate labs and research facilities, and alumni tend to be generous with donations. Business education is big business, too. Some 146,000 graduate degrees in business were awarded in the U.S. in 2005-06; roughly one-fourth of the 594,000 graduate degrees awarded that school year, according to the U.S. Education Department. Still, there have been signs that all is not well in business education. A study of cheating among graduate students by Linda Trevino, Ken Butterfield and Donald McCabe, published in 2006 in the journal Academy of Management Learning & Education, found that 56 percent of all M.B.A. students cheated regularly—more than in any other discipline. The authors attributed that to “perceived peer behavior.” In other words, students believed everyone else was doing it. No wonder the issue of ethics in corporate America has been seen as important.

McCabe, writing in the Harvard Business Review, contends the prevalence of cheating among MBA students is because of the “get-it-done, dam-the-torpedoes, succeed-at-all costs mentality that many business students bring to he game.” McCabe describes an MBA student mentality of getting the highest GPA possible so that they can get the highest paid jobs in the pharmaceutical, high tech and finance industries.

Michael Jacobs, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argues that there have been three profound failures of sound business practices at the root of the economic crisis that have not been addressed by business schools. The first is the practice of financial incentives as a motivation for leadership, which has morphed into greed. The second is the failure of instituting a financial regulatory system and the absence of any meaningful corporate board responsibility and oversight of CEOs. The third breakdown has been the focus on short-term financial gain for the shareholder at any cost.

Some employers are also questioning the value of an M.B.A. degree. A research project that two Harvard professors released in 2008 found that employers valued graduates’ ability to think through complex business problems, but that something was still lacking. “There is a need to broaden from the analytical focus of M.B.A. programs for more emphasis on skills and a sense of purpose and identity,” said David A. Garvin, a professor of business administration and one of the project’s authors.

Indeed, students themselves may welcome an emphasis on character skills and personal development. In surveys that the Aspen Institute regularly conducts, M.B.A. candidates say they actually become less confident during their time in business school that they will be able to resolve ethical quandaries in the workplace.

The value of the MBA degree may also be in decline. Many recruitment experts now see the MBA as having replaced the bachelor’s degree as a threshold for management and leadership positions. John Bryne, in an article in BNET, reports data showing the salaries for MBA graduates from 2001 to 2010 have actually declined, in comparison to the high costs of getting a the degree in the top schools.

In fairness, a number of business schools recognize these problems, and are trying to revise their model and focus but most have yet to realize they have credibility problem. Business schools such as the Rotman School of Business, Carnegie-Mellon, Wharton, Yale, Stanford and others are overhauling the MBA program, with a focus on better problem-solving, decision-making, ethics and social responsibility, along with a greater focus on experiential opportunities.

Angel Cabrera, President of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona, says that business schools are slowly beginning to move towards accepting the broader responsibility of management, citing the example of more than 200 business schools around the world that have endorsed the Principles of Responsible Management Education, a movement sponsored by the United Nations.

So what should business schools focus on? I would argue that business school or executive training programs should focus more on developing individuals’ personal growth with an emphasis on values, emotional intelligence and ethical behavior in business. The challenge for business schools is how to develop leaders not managers, and who believe that business has bottom lines beyond shareholder value.