William F. Gephardt
Values-based, data-driven—as imagined before Olin existed in language from 1914

When we unveiled the new brand strategy for WashU Olin Business School a year ago today, Dean Mark Taylor made a point of saying we weren’t changing who we are as a school. The notion of a business education that is values-based and data-driven—a key pillar of Olin’s strategic plan and our brand identity—has been there since Olin’s beginning.

“Values-based and data-driven is not something we just dreamed up. It’s imprinted in our DNA,” said Stuart Bunderson, director of Olin’s Bauer Leadership Center. “We don’t do enough here to clarify and take pride in our heritage.”

Actually, the notion predates the existence of the business school itself.

William F. Gephart, who would become the first dean of the WashU “School of Commerce and Finance” in 1917, drafted a lengthy memo to Frederic Aldin Hall, the sixth chancellor of WashU, three years earlier to argue the case for the business school he envisioned.

Only a page into the typewritten document—and in the gender-exclusive language of the era—he writes that “the vision of the business man must be both far and wide. He must not only see the numerous and seemingly conflicting facts, but he must be able to analyze them.”

Sounds a lot like data-driven decision-making, no?

On the very next page of the 15-page document, Gephart writes a bit more expansively:

“Many men in business rightly view with alarm some of the governmental tendencies in regulating business. This threatened and actually experienced undesirable restriction on business enterprise has resulted from two causes:

“(a) The excesses of a minor number of business men who in their zeal to secure private profits have needlessly sacrificed public interests.

“(b) The demagogue in office or desiring office, who would sacrifice public interests to further his political success.

“The properly trained business man will act as a restraining influence on each class. He will set an example of good private business that is also good public business…”

Does anyone else hear “values-based” in that description?

Bunderson, the George & Carol Bauer Professor of Organizational Ethics & Governance, uses these quotes in a class he co-teaches with Seethu Seetharaman. The course is called Values-Based, Data-Driven Decision-Making.

Gephart drafted those remarks on February 19, 1914. A little more than three years later, on March 30, 1917, the School of Commerce and Finance—the precursor to Olin Business School—was established.

Pictured above: William F. Gephart with screenshots from his 1914 memo.

In News
Tag

4 Responses to "Values-based, data-driven—as imagined before Olin existed in language from 1914"

  1. avatar Michael McCarthy

    Is there any place to read the original memo in it’s entirety?

  2. avatar Thomas R. Leith - MBA 2003

    Ah. Public Interests may be sacrificed by unregulated business men, but only when needful. I see. At least he recognized Public Interest as a concern of the business man. Must’ve been a fading Progressive.

    I’m afraid I’m not much interested in a “brand strategy”. My question to the dean and all the faculty: will you teach that the position of Milton Friedman on the purpose of business is false? What will you teach is the purpose of business?

    Per Veritatem Vis

    • avatar Kurt Greenbaum

      Thank you for reading. The framing of your question seems to imply an answer. What would you hope we are teaching about the purpose of business?