Business globalization and ideology: The dissemination of anti-democratic thought

Business Globalization carries with it a justification based in part on democracy in markets: equal opportunity in market exchange. Markets admit all comers; outcomes are determined by endowments of quality, efficiency, and merit. In this way businesses, governments, organizations and individuals all competitively participate in the globalized marketplace for influence and outcomes best deserved. This research explores the extent to which that articulated value set enjoys support among American Business faculty in a context of steeply increasing management power world-wide. Responses to a U.S. based nationally representative survey show that more than half of Business faculty do not consider lack of equal opportunity (a central foundation of democracy) to be a problem; a lesser proportion endorse racism and sexism as well. Tracking the steady global rise in corporate economic power, and in Business School graduates over 45 years, we find concern in the dissemination of such ideologies that these growth patterns, and survey responses, suggest. To the extent that equal opportunity is desired in our global political economy, these results suggest a more active institutional oversight is needed for economic exchange, which otherwise is apparently guided by elitism and anti-democratic thought.