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Dean's welcome William McDonald Wallace, Ph.D.
This is all passing away. In this first decade of the 21st century and third millennium we are entering a quite different postmodern world. It is the mission of the business and economics division of Saint Martin's to prepare our students for this postmodern world and to understand its worldview. Our focus will shift from the education of narrow specialists to that of broader gauge generalists. You will enter the world of life-long learning and "just-in-time" training. You will learn why management hierarchies are rapidly giving way to organic networks of self managed teams. You will also learn why the concept of partnership is replacing the older idea of the employee as an impersonal "hired hand". This shift into the postmodern world is affecting all sectors of society. Business has been leading the way since the new paradigm first began to emerge there in the mid 1980's. As a business major you not only learn about this shift, but also why the old view failed and what is driving the new. You will discover how this postmodern world affects you, your career prospects, and life in general. In the course of your studies you will gain hands on experience; the kind you will need in the world you are about to enter. You will work on projects in diverse self-directed teams. You will meet and work with students of all age levels and diverse backgrounds. You will learn that spiritual concerns are woven throughout life, including business, and cannot be isolated in separate compartments of life. Your class sizes will be small, with less than 25 students. You will also have the opportunity to work as an intern with businesses such as Boeing, the State of Washington, county agencies, CPA firms, financial institutions or Weyerhaeuser, to get actual business experience and receive University credit for it. In short, we at Saint Martin's feel that our interdisciplinary business program will provide you with this new orientation as well or better than any other business program. Sincerely,
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These
are exciting times for business majors. We are shifting from an
industrial economy to a new and different information society thanks to
electronics, computers, and the WEB. Because of these changes, our
society is leaving the modern mechanistic worldview. That
worldview focused on the division of labor and the reduction of the
world into its component parts, studied as narrow specialties.
This was also a secular worldview and it made little or no room for
spiritual values. Thus the modern era was ruled by machines and driven
by an arid machine logic, and was governed top down by a patriarchal
management hierarchy. Its reigning form of organization was
the fragmented and impersonal bureaucracy.